Cave paintings, Cantabria

The prehistoric cave paintings in Cantabria are something unique, something priceless, something that cannot be described. They are a legacy left by the ancestors to tell and pass down from generation to generation those stories that no one can tell them. They are painted to show their rites and holidays, their worship of Creation itself.
Prehistoric paintings in Cantabria tell of the work of people thousands of years ago, of their wisdom and maturation, of the cycle of their lives from birth to death. The cave paintings reveal to us in a wonderful way a great truth - that there is not much difference between us and them, that neither our modern hairstyles, shiny clothes, Phoenician signs and super technologies make us different, simply because we are one species.
The first prehistoric cave paintings were discovered in 1879 in the Altamira Cave. A cave with a name as mysterious as it is exotic, as mysterious as it is aristocratic. Driven by a desire to study artifacts left by prehistoric people, Don Marcelino de Southwall dug the floor and came across bone needles, weapon tips, flint or bone harpoons, remains of killed animals and buried people. But it is not this evidence of human presence that determines Altamira's uniqueness.
Don Marcelino did not even suspect that the wealth of the cave was elsewhere, until his daughter Maria looked up at the ceiling and saw "oxen". Thus, if the father is considered the discoverer of the Altamira Cave, then his eight-year-old daughter is considered the discoverer of the world of Altamira.
The largest prehistoric drawing is of a deer, 2.25 m long. The stylized legs of the animal, the confident contours of the drawing, the multicolor modeling, all this gives great realism to the figure. The entire ceiling of the cave is covered with over 100 drawings of horses, deer, deer, bison. There are very few images of people, and only with contours. In the cave there are also handprints made with red paint.
But the rich collection of prehistoric cave paintings in Cantabria does not end with the end of the Altemira Cave. In 1991, archaeologists discovered Paleolithic paintings in La Garma Cave. The other four caves near Puente Viesgo are not so impressive, but they also have images of bison, goats, cattle and horses in different styles.
Prehistoric cave paintings are not so rich in human images. The most magnificent are the drawings of animals. In each one, life is breathed in in an incredible way, given volume and movement, which very clearly reveals their deep respect and understanding of the nature of Nature.
To paint and bequeath their history, prehistoric people used natural mineral pigments to create colors - ocher, brown, red, and for the contours they used charcoal or a chisel of bone or flint. Paints are applied with fingers, leather swabs or brush-like tools. The feeling of movement in the cave paintings is conveyed very successfully, all the figures are voluminous, and when the rock was not suitable enough, they additionally shaped it by scraping off the excess mass.