Archaeologists identify 280 engravings in Catalonia cave
Researchers from IPHES-CERCA documented 280 Palaeolithic art motifs in the Cova de la Font Major, dated back around 26,000 years.
Archaeologists from the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES-CERCA) described hundreds of rock-art engravings dating back around 26,000 years in the Cova de la Font Major in Catalonia, Spain, reporting the findings in Antiquity as covered by Nature nature.com
Naturenature.comOpen source ↗. Archaeologist Josep Maria Vergès Bosch first spotted prehistoric engravings among modern graffiti during a planned excavation in 2019.
Catalogued motifs
Vergès Bosch and archaeologist Míriam Salas-Altès documented 280 Palaeolithic art motifs throughout the site, including 55 depictions of animals. The identified etchings include figures of a horse, a bear, and an aurochs, accompanied by numerous swirling lines. The authors reported that ancient artists integrated natural fissures and wall contours into their work, using one natural line to represent the ground surface underneath a horse.
Cave environment
The underground system comprises more than 3.5 kilometres of subterranean passageways that have been occupied multiple times across human history. The site has been open to the public for some seven decades and became a museum in the 1990s.
Salas-Altès stated that the depressions remained difficult to spot under direct illumination nature.com
Naturenature.comOpen source ↗. Documenting the shallow lines required directing light from varied angles to reveal the depressions beneath modern markings.
