Video: The Cave of Altamira
A visit to the Cave of Altamira in Northern Spain, home to one of the oldest and most impressive collections of cave art in the world.
Along the northern coast of Spain, the town of Santillana del Mar is home to an ancient art project tens of thousands of years in the making. The Cave of Altamira, part of a larger cave art complex running through France and Spain, is notable for paintings described as some of the oldest, most complex, and best preserved in the world. The most ancient of these paintings have been dated to around 35,000 BCE. The youngest were created by about 11,000 BCE. For 24,000 years, then, human beings used this cave not only to find shelter, but to contribute to one of the longest-running art projects in history. Perhaps only the painted caves of Australia have seen a longer span of human artistic contribution.
Much of Altamira’s art is dedicated to the natural life of Paleolithic Europe. Primitive horses, bison, and deer are the main subjects adorning its walls. While depictions of humans are scarce, the cave’s inhabitants did leave behind the outlines of their hands, cast onto the wall with halos of red paint.
This video, courtesy of UNESCO, will take you on a brief tour of the Cave at Altamira. Today, preservation of the cave and its paintings is a major priority for Spain and researchers. As such, the cave has been mostly closed to visitors to prevent further damage from exposure to fresh air and human contact. However, a replica of the cave has been created nearby, allowing visitors to still experience the descent into a relic of our ancient past.
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