26,000-Year-Old Cave Art Discovered in Spain

Archaeologists have identified hundreds of rock-art engravings in a cave in Catalonia, Spain, that are approximately 26,000 years old. The cave, which is frequently visited by tourists, was previously thought to have minimal prehistoric art.

Josep Maria Vergès Bosch, an archaeologist at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution, discovered the engravings during a planned excavation in 2019 while examining modern graffiti in the Cova de la Font Major.

Vergès and Míriam Salas-Altès studied 280 Palaeolithic art motifs, including 55 animal depictions, from the cave. Salas-Altès noted that the quantity of art found is exceptional.

The cave system, which spans over 3.5 kilometres of underground passages, has been accessible to the public for about seven decades and became a museum in the 1990s. The engravings were difficult to detect due to their subtle nature.

Salas-Altès explained that the engravings are hard to see unless light is directed from different angles to highlight the depressions. The art includes images of animals such as a horse, a bear, and an aurochs, as well as swirling lines.

Some engravings utilized natural lines or fissures in the cave walls. For instance, one such feature was used to represent the ground beneath a horse.