Altamira Caves:

who discovered their prehistoric paintings?

Many of you may not have heard of the famous Altamira caves of Spain which are said to contain some of the world’s most important prehistoric cave paintings. Altamira (Spanish for ‘high view’) is located near the town of Santillana del Mar in Cantabria, Spain, 30 km west of the city of Satander. The prehistoric polycrome paintings said to belong to the Old Stone Age or Paleolithic Age discovered way back in 1880 are world famous today and the Altamira caves comprising 150 beautiful paintings believed to be done in orchre and charcoal, giving a three dimensional effect, are highly protected. The caves were declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO in December 1985.

Millions of people, including the famous artist Picasso have visited these caves after they were discovered to view these wonderful paintings. However, as the amount of carbon dioxide exhaled by the visitors and other natural elements started having a damaging effect on the 140,000 years old paintings, the caves were closed to the public in 1977 and re-opened only in 1982. Would you believe that the cave paintings were so famous that a replica of the cave and a museum was built in 2001 by two people named Manuel Fraquelo and Seven Nebel containing the polychrome paintings in the main hall of the original Altamira cave along with a few more minor paintings discovered in the cave? You will realise how significant the people consider these ancient cave paintings to be when you learn about the number of people who visited the replica cave (especially after the original caves were closed) - over 2.5 million, and still counting.

What is significant is how and by whom these valuable cave paintings were first discovered.

Here is how the story goes.....

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The Girl of Altamira

Don Marcelino de Santuola was an engineer and an amateur archaeologist. Do you know who an archaeologist is? An archaeologist is a man who digs up the earth searching for objects and remains of ancient times.

Marcelino de Santuola had a daughter called Maria and this story is about Maria who made a great discovery when she was only a child of five, and became world famous as the Girl of Altamira.

Maria’s father is described as an amateur archaeologist because he was doing it for the love of it, as a pastime - it was not a job for which he was paid. That’s the difference between an amateur and a professional.

The opening of this cave on Don Marcelino’s land which is known as the Altamira caves now was discovered by a his game keeper in 1868. But no one went near it for fear of ghosts and the villagers believed that whoever went in would be bewitched.

Have any of you been to a cave? I am sure you have. There are many caves in Sri Lanka. Some of them are famous temples such as the Dambulla and Aluvihara caves; down south there is Mulgirigala.

About ten years after the discovery of the cave, Don Marcellino started going there; he started digging the earth in the hope of finding some object which would prove that many thousands of years ago, people had hunted and lived in his own land. Tools and weapons of bone, horn and antler, and pieces of flint had been discovered in caves in the Pyrennes mountains - that’s the range of mountains between Spain and France. Altamira was not far from the Pyrannes, these tools had been used by the hunters who lived in these caves when the rest of Europe was covered with ice.

Don Marcelino had once found a bone point and a few flint scrapers which the great professors of Madrid and Paris had said were definitely tools of the stone-age hunters. After this discovery Don Marcelino’s visit to the cave became more frequent and he would dig and dig and dig. Sometimes he found a small tool of bone or horn; occasionally a big bone with drawings on it; often he came home with nothing but his digging tools. But Don Marcelino was not discouraged.

He often took Maria with him to the cave. Maria was then only five years old. She was as excited as the father when he took up a clump of earth and started breaking it and if and when he did find a bone point or a scraper she jumped and danced in glee.

When he went on digging she would amuse herself by running about in the cave. She was not afraid of ghosts and moreover she had a light in her hand. The cave was dark so Don Marcelino always brought some candles along.

One day as Don Marcelino was busy digging he suddenly heard Maria shout “Tores”, “Tores”. Tores is the Spanish word for bull. Don Marcelino thought that the child had got frightened and was imagining that bulls were chasing her. So he dropped the hoe and went up to her, but she was in a deep niche in the cave.

“Don’t be a afraid Maria”, the father conforted her, “There are no bulls there”.

“There are bulls, papa, they are beautiful. I am not afraid”.

“Come out of the hollow my child, you are in a fever and imagining things”.

“Papa look, look” Maria shouted excitedly and shone the candle on the hump of the rock. Don Marcelino crawled into the low chamber and looked but he saw nothing. “Look. Look up there, he is looking at you” Maria kept shouting. But because her father still could not see what she saw, Maria ran - it was easy for her to run as she was so tiny - and brought her father’s hoe and pointed out the spot.

Then, even as Maria had said, a great big animal was looking at him with much sadness as if it were its last look.

But it was not a bull as Maria had presumed but a bison. The red of the bison’s body glowed as if the painting had been done just the week before. And as Don Marcelino, with Maria by his side, glanced from one rock hump to the other, he saw, an animal on each of them - a galloping horse, a herd of hind, a wild boar that seemed to be charging at them.

As the candle flickered Maria shouted, “The bull is moving”, Don Marcelino drew her closer to his side and said “Don’t be afraid, it is only a painted animal”.

Don Marcelino reported the discovery to his friend Vilanova Y Piora the famous Professor of Geography in Madrid, and he came to see the cave and the paintings and so did other learned men and lesser men from Madrid. newspapers published Maria’s photograph and accounts of her and she became world famous, for as the great professors said she had discovered paintings done by people who lived almost 50 thousand years ago and she was the first to make this discovery. The paintings had been there all those thousands of years unseen, untouched and unknown till little Maria had set eyes on the great big bison on that November day in 1878.

And one day King Alponso, the King of Spain himself visited the cave. Like everyone else he had to kneel and crouch and crawl and he did not mind it one bit, because it was exciting to see the work of artists who lived so long, long ago.

When the King came out of the cave the vast crowd that had gathered began cheering him; but His Majesty made a sign which made them silent. Then he took little Maria by the hand, and said for all to hear, “We have to thank you little Maria, for this great discovery. Spain is proud of the little girl of Altamira”

- Sumana Saparamadu

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[ Fast facts]

* The drawings and multi-coloured cave paintings of wild animals and human hands discovered at the Altamira cave complex was designated a UN World Heritage site in 1985.Due to the striking beauty of these paintings the caves have also earned the nickname - the ' Sistine Chapel of Stone Age Art.'

* The Altamira cave complex is about 296 metres long and consits of twisting passages and chambers. The main passage is about 2-6 metres long.

* The cave was discovered by chance by a hunter named Modesto Cubillas in 1868 and first explored by Marcelino Sanz de Santuola, a nobleman from Santande . the first paintings were discovered by Maria,his daugther in 1879.

* Cave paintings are paintings on cave walls and ceilings, and the term is used especially for those dating to prehistoric times. The earliest European cave paintings date to Aurignacian, some 32,000 years

* Nearly 350 caves have now been discovered in France and Spain that contain art from prehistoric times. The age of the paintings in many sites has been a contentious issue.

*The oldest known cave art is that of Chauvet in France, the paintings of which may be 32,000 years old according to radiocarbon dating, and date back to 30,000 BCE (Upper Paleolithic)ome researchers believe

* The most common themes in cave paintings are large wild animals, such as bison, horses, aurochs, and deer, and tracings of human hands as well as abstract patterns, called finger flutings.

* Cave paintings found at the Apollo 11 cave in Namibia may be among the earliest cave art. The estimated age of the images date from approximately 23,000 - 25,000 B.CE

* Significant early cave paintings have also been found in Kakadu National Park in Australia.