24,000-Year-Old Cave Art Found
Photo from Cambridge University Press
You may have heard of cave paintings, but what exactly are they? Well, cave art dates back to the Ice Age (or upper Paleolithic); which is roughly 40,000 to 14,000 years ago. This ancient form of art usually illustrates human heads and animals. In the earlier time periods, handprints and hand stencils were common depictions in cave paintings, as well as animals such as cave lions, mammoths, and woolly rhinoceroses. Later on, there were horses, bison, aurochs, cervids, and ibex. The exact meaning of cave paintings is unknown, with some believing they have a symbolic or religious function, while others think they have been created within the framework of shamanic beliefs and practices.
Most cave paintings have been found in France and Spain; others in Portugal, England, Italy, Romania, Germany, Russia, and Indonesia. It is rare that cave paintings are outside of Europe, but they have been found in the Americas, in Australia, and in Asia.
Deep within a 1,600-foot-deep cave called Cueva Dones, is the location of a recent discovery of cave art in Spain. Although being a well-known site for adventurers, hikers, and spelunkers, these paintings were undiscovered until they were found by researchers from the universities of Zaragoza and Alicante, who are affiliated with the University of Southampton.
A collection of drawings in the form of red clay finger paintings and engravings of horses, a red deer stag, seven hinds (female red deer), two auroch (an extinct wild bovine), and two indeterminate animals; as well as a variety of finger flutings and some basic shapes were found on the soft cave ceiling. This collection of drawings is thought to be more than 24,000 years old, which proves to be possible.
"The humid environment of the cave did the rest: the 'paintings' dried quite slowly, preventing parts of the clay from falling down rapidly, while other parts were covered by calcite layers, which preserved them until today," said Dr Aitor Ruiz-Redondo, Senior Lecturer of Prehistory at the University of Zaragoza and a research affiliate at the University of Southampton.
Further research will be conducted since there is still so much to discover and document in this cave.
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