Stone Pages - Archaeo News (Iberian Penisnula)

Horned helmets of the Bronze Age

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 15:14:09 +0100

Horned helmets are found in three places in Europe: Scandinavia, southern Iberia, and Sardinia. Horned helmet imagery has a complex history, with Levantine roots in the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean. The only existing horned metal helmets are a pair from Denmark, though similar imagery is found both within and outside Denmark.
The horned warrior occurs in southern Sardinia and adjoining parts of Corsica, a middle zone in southwestern Iberia, and a northern zone in southern Scandinavia, but little or not at all in the rest of Europe, except in the Near East and the eastern Mediterranean, which have a deep history of horned-helmet figures connected with divine rulership and with warfare, at the time when the longstanding Bronze Age civilisation there was in rapid transition, around 1200 BCE.
Scandinavian horned-helmet representations stand out among Nordic Bronze Age expressions, yet are understudied as a group. Recent fieldwork acknowledges a relationship between the Sardinian and the Scandinavian imagery. Close similarities between the rock carvings of Tanum, Sweden, and the Iberian stelae have been noted, while Alpine and Galician rock art may reveal similarities between these regions.
Apart from the two normal-sized helmets from Denmark, and a horn from a similar helmet, the Scandinavian repertoire consists of three sets of two figurines. Additionally, there are a pair of figures on a razor, and about 40 images on rock in western Sweden. The motif favours horned twin warriors. Similar horns also occur on snakes and horses, and horse-headed gold bowls. Blowing horns or lurs, always in doubles, can be seen as a parallel way of portraying the horned twins, who are sometimes depicted playing the lur.
It is clear that horns in anthropomorphic and zoomorphic imagery have a deep ancestry. Overlapping dates are seen for horned-helmet representations in Scandinavia (1000 to 750 BCE), Iberia (1200 or 1100 to 750 BCE), and Sardinia (1200 to 750 BCE). Sardinia and the Iberian southwest are naturally rich in metals. Scandinavia was completely dependent on imported copper.
Sardinia and Iberia mostly share features that tie all three zones together. Archery is a favourite in both zones. Similarity between Scandinavia and Sardinia is strong, however the Scandinavian rock carvings share features especially with the Iberian stelae. The 40 Scandinavian horned-helmet warriors reside within a wider community of anthropomorphic figures, both in bronze and on rock, including other males without horned insignia, females, and smaller, more ordinary-looking figures.
Similarly, in Iberia, 41 horned-helmet figures are identifiable on 140 stelae so far recorded. In addition to horned-helmet warriors, the anthropomorphic group of stelae includes warriors wearing a crested or pointed conical helmet, in addition to smaller, anonymous-looking figures including children, and women wearing a diadem or crown headdress. Like the Scandinavian figurines and rock carvings, some of the Iberian scenes appear as a narrative. Both regions depict the horns in the same manner.
In the medium of bronze, helmet appearance is strikingly similar in Sardinia and Scandinavia, with a similar length, turn, and the position of the horns. Frequently occurring are short, stubby horns with a forward tilt close to the head, long horns standing erect, and the ends of horns sometimes with distinct knobs.
Sardinia has the largest variation of the three regions, including unique versions with longhorns pointing in different directions. The horns of Iberian stelae and the Tanum rock art always stand erect and may turn in various directions; their appearance seems to have been dictated by the stone. The combination of crest and horns on the Danish helmets matches those on the Sardinian bronzetti. Turned horns occur in all three zones. Doubles or mirror-images of warriors with and without horned helmets appear in all three zones.
The warrior stelae of Iberia belong to the Atlantic and Western Mediterranean Bronze Age. The local antecedents are Neolithic anthropomorphic portable idols and menhirs, as well as earlier Bronze Age stelae depicting weaponry in much the same way as the earliest warrior stelae, however the horned-helmet figure is an outsider to the region; its first appearance is likely due to Late Bronze Age connections with Sardinia. The subsequent Phoenician expansion in the west could have further reinforced the motif. Of the three zones, the Sardinian has the clearest local foundation, and may be the main source of the other two.

Edited from Praehistorische Zeitschrift, via De Gruyter (21 December 2021)

Conserving the submerged dolmen of Guadalperal

Thu, 06 Jan 2022 11:11:17 +0100

One of the most notable examples of megalithic architecture in the middle Tagus river basin, the megalithic complex of Guadalperal, in the Valdecañas reservoir about 180 kilometres west-southwest of Madrid (Spain), continues to be the focus of attention after it was completely exposed for the first time in 50 years by extreme dry conditions in the summer of 2019.
Made up mainly of around 140 upright stones, the burial chamber would have been 5 meters in diameter with a triple line of stone slabs arranged concentrically around it, and a corridor almost 10 metres long guarded by a menhir and a stela with a serpentine figure carved into it. Raised in two different phases, the later construction dates to between the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE.
Recorded in 1925, and excavated between 1925 and 1927 by the famous German prehistorian and geologist Hugo Obermaier, finds included mainly scrapers, points, flakes and scraps of flint, and quartzite carvings. Obermaier then directed the restoration and stabilization of the enclosure's uprights, and its protection with a perimeter brick wall to prevent the entry of livestock.
The construction of the reservoir on the Tagus river in 1963 flooded the site, which has since only been visible in periods of prolonged drought, or due to the discharges for the regulation of the river flow. The situation in 2019 provoked a debate regarding the prehistoric complex, including a proposal to relocate the monument. A resolution by the Ministry of Culture in 2020 declared the enclave an 'asset of cultural interest', considering it essential to preserve its relationship with the landscape where it was built.
Following another lowering of the water level in the summer of 2021, a team made up of restorers, archaeologists, a geologist and a biologist undertook consolidation and conservation work to counteract erosion caused by inundations and large numbers of visitors, renewing calls for its rescue.

Edited from RedHistoria (27 December 2021)

Mercury poisoning in Copper Age Iberia

Mon, 06 Dec 2021 11:08:06 +0100

A recent paper from the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, revealed that the oldest victims of mercury poisoning was buried in Spain and Portugal. While the exposure to mercury today happens due to the intake of certain fish or shellfish, the levels are low. Researchers were able to compare bones from 23 different sites belonging to 370 individuals that inhabited the area over a period of 5,000 years. The remains showed mercury levels of up to 400 parts per million (ppm), much higher than the normal level of 1-2 ppm.
The question then is where this poisoning came from? The answer lies in one of the main artistic elements of the time, cinnabar powder. This fine powder, when turned into a pigment, is responsible for the color known as 'Pompeian red' or 'Vermillion'. This pigment is often used in tombs from this period in southern Portugal and Andalusia, where it is used to decorate figurines and paint megalithic chambers. As the Copper Age drew to a close, around 2200 BCE, the use of cinnabar decreased significantly, according to the study.

Edited from EurekAlert! (15 November 2021), ScienceAlert (18 November 2021)

Iberian dolmen was painted red

Sun, 05 Dec 2021 09:14:12 +0100

Investigations of the nearly 6,000 year old dolmen of Cañada Real, in the megalithic necropolis of Los Molares, about 40 kilometres southeast of Sevilla in what is now southwest Spain, found prehistoric red paint over a large part of the interior of the stone uprights, in addition to small schematic figures, fingerprints, prehistoric engravings, and two anthropomorphic stone stelae. Analysis of pigment samples determined that they correspond to a reddish iron ore.
Red pigment was very common in funeral rites. Skeletons in the Cañada Real dolmen reveal that the bodies of the deceased were coloured at the time of burial. Ceramic, flint, a stone adze, stone necklace beads, and other grave goods were discovered there in 1968.
According to archaeologist Ramirez Moreno, "the use of pigments in prehistoric Andalusian megaliths has been a constant in the funerary field since the Neolithic, with the first megalithic constructions on the Iberian Peninsula in the 4th millennium BCE." Another example of this the Alberite I Dolmen in Cadiz, about 50 kilometres south of Cañada Real, where both cinnabar and iron oxide were used.
A room in the Historical Interpretation Center of the 14th century Castle of Los Molares is dedicated to the megalithic necropolis. In the coming months, work will begin to conserve the dolmen as a tourist attraction.

Edited from ABCdesevilla (18 November 2021)

Scientists solve 5,000-year-old murder

Sat, 23 Jan 2021 16:11:09 +0100

A fractured skull was found during an excavation at the archaeological site of Cova Foradada in northeastern Spain in 1999. The man was killed 5,000 years ago, but the cause of his death has only now been established.
Miguel Angel Moreno-Ibanez, main researcher at the Catalan Institute of Human Palaeo-ecology and Social Evolution (IPHES), says the skull came from a Neolithic collective burial in the cave with around 18 individual remains. The man - said to have been in his 50s - died at a time when our ancestors were forming into small communities and increasingly warring among themselves. Researchers have identified a dramatic increase in the number of killings in this period, based on injuries people suffered.
The man received a blow to the right parietal area of the skull (above and behind the right ear) which shows no evidence of having healed. Experts believe a heavy object was the cause of death. "It was like a small-sized hoe, very common in the Neolithic period that was used as a weapon."
The skull also has two antemortem fractures that were healed - in the occipital (rear) and the right side, both from years before the man's death - and a post-mortem fracture in the lower occipital area.

Edited from Yahoo! News, The Tennessee Tribune (27 December 2020)

Some tasks specialised according to gender almost 4,000 years ago

Sat, 26 Dec 2020 19:55:22 +0100

A study of the dental wear of 106 individuals buried in the Castellon Alto archaeological site around 140 kilometres northeast of Granada, Spain, found that only women used their front teeth as tools to make threads and cords.
Between 2200 BCE and 1550 BCE the culture of El Argar developed in the south-eastern Iberian Peninsula. It is known that this was a complex society that practiced social differentiation based on gender, age, and specialisation in tasks such as ceramics, stone, textiles, and metals.
A recent study by the Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) and the University of Rovira i Virgili (URV), conducted in collaboration with the Anthropology Laboratory of the University of Granada, reveals that Bronze Age women were using their front teeth to perform certain tasks associated with making threads and cords as early as 1900 to 1600 BCE.
The signs of wear include notches, chipped enamel, and grooves resulting from the manipulation of fibres of plant and animal origin. Only a small group of people were making threads, and those using their teeth were exclusively women of different ages - the older the individual, the more pronounced the wear - inferring that specialisation began in adolescence and continued throughout their lives.
The study forms part of one of the research strands at the IPHES that aims to identify the use of teeth as tools.

Edited from PhysORG (3 November 2020)

Early humans may have survived the harsh winters by hibernating

Sat, 26 Dec 2020 15:43:31 +0100

Evidence from bones found in a cave called Sima de los Huesos (the pit of bones) at Atapuerca, near Burgos in northern Spain, suggests that our hominid predecessors may have dealt with extreme cold hundreds of thousands of years ago by sleeping through the winter. The scientists argue that lesions and other signs of damage in fossilised bones of early humans are the same as those left in the bones of other animals that hibernate. These suggest that our predecessors coped with the ferocious winters at that time by slowing down their metabolisms and sleeping for months.
Atapuerca cave is effectively a mass grave, say researchers who have found thousands of teeth and pieces of bone that appear to have been deliberately dumped there. These fossils date back more than 400,000 years and were probably from early Neanderthals or their predecessors.
In a recent paper, Juan-Luis Arsuaga - who led the team that first excavated at the site - and Antonis Bartsiokas, of Democritus University of Thrace in Greece, argue that the fossils found there show seasonal variations that suggest that bone growth was disrupted for several months of each year. They suggest these early humans found themselves 'in metabolic states that helped them to survive for long periods of time in frigid conditions with limited supplies of food and enough stores of body fat'. They hibernated and this is recorded as disruptions in bone development.
The researchers admit the notion 'may sound like science fiction' but point out that many mammals including primates such as bushbabies and lemurs do this. "This suggests that the genetic basis and physiology for such a hypometabolism could be preserved in many mammalian species including humans," state Arsuaga and Bartsiokas.
The authors examine several counter-arguments. Modern Inuit and Sámi people - although living in equally harsh, cold conditions - do not hibernate. So why did the people in the Sima cave? The answer, say Arsuaga and Bartsiokas, is that fatty fish and reindeer fat provide Inuit and Sami people with food during winter and so preclude the need for them to hibernate. In contrast, the area around the Sima site half a million years ago would not have provided anything like enough food. As they state: "The aridification of Iberia then could not have provided enough fat-rich food for the people of Sima during the harsh winter - making them resort to cave hibernation."
"It is a very interesting argument and it will certainly stimulate debate," said forensic anthropologist Patrick Randolph-Quinney of Northumbria University in Newcastle. "However, there are other explanations for the variations seen in the bones found in Sima and these have to be addressed fully before we can come to any realistic conclusions. That has not been done yet, I believe."
Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London pointed out that large mammals such as bears do not actually hibernate - instead they enter a less deep sleep known as torpor. In such a condition, the energy demands of the human-sized brains of the Sima people would have remained very large, creating an additional survival problem for them during torpor. "Nevertheless, the idea is a fascinating one that could be tested by examining the genomes of the Sima people, Neanderthals and Denisovans for signs of genetic changes linked with the physiology of torpor" he added.
The Sima de los Huesos site has been excavated annually since 1983 and 5,500 human skeletal remains have been unearthed there to date.

Edited from The Guardian (20 December 2020), The Independent (21 December 2020)

Study suggests two megalithic cultures were separate groups

Fri, 24 Jan 2020 10:59:26 +0100

A team of researchers from the U.K., Belgium and Spain has found evidence that two groups of people in Late Neolithic Europe living approximately 5,500 years ago belonged to two distinct communities. The study was based on isotopes found in teeth from two ancient burial sites located in Spain.
Several years ago, scientists studying the remains of two groups of Late Neolithic people living within 4 to 6 kilometers of one another in what is now the Rioja Alavesa region in Spain concluded that the two groups were actually just one group, and they suggested the distance between the two groups was due to status and wealth. The researchers had come to this conclusion because of the way the two groups buried their dead. Those that lived in the foothills used caves. Those in the valley created megalithic gravesites. In this new effort, the researchers found evidence that suggests the two groups were actually separate communities.
The new work involved studying the molars of 27 adults who had been buried in the caves and graves- or more specifically, the isotopes they contained. Teeth, unlike bones, do not change their isotope signals as a person ages. That allows for tracking the lifestyle of the person under study, particularly the foods they ate.
The researchers found several differences in diet.The people buried in the megalithic graves ate more plants than did those buried in the caves, particularly when they were children. Conversely, those in the foothills ate more meat. Those living in the valley also had more cavities due to a diet richer in carbohydrates. Also, the children that had grown up in the cave community had more calcium in their teeth, suggesting they were weaned at a later age. Taken together, the evidence suggests that the people in the groups lived apart for most, if not all of their lives, making them separate entities.
The researchers suggest that the close proximity likely meant that people from the two communities interacted regularly. They also note that it was likely that there were occasional violent encounters, as well - but not enough to justify building protective barriers.

Edited from PhysORG (23 January 2020)

Were Neolithic rock axeheads used as currency?

Sun, 15 Dec 2019 12:31:15 +0100

When the African and Eurasian tectonic plates clashed together millennia ago the enormous pressure that went into the formation of The Alps produced extremely hard crystalline basement rock.
Similar to the way precious metals such as gold and silver are prized today, artifacts manufactured from hard rocks proved to be a trading commodity as far back as the Neolithic Era. There main use was in the manufacture of axeheads which, due to the nature of their usage, had to be durable and reliable. Quite rapidly these prized items became widely exchanged and traded, with examples having been found over 1000 kilometres away from their source of origin.
Now, for the first time, a team from the Department of Prehistory at the University of Barcelona (Spain) has begun a study into these axeheads, in an attempt at gaining an understanding of why Alpine stone became such a sought after commodity.
A researcher with the team, Selina Delgado-Raack, is quoted as saying "The reasons favouring the integration of specific rock types into these long-distance networks depended on a complex pattern of technological and functional criteria". A fellow colleague in the team, Roberto Risch, reinforced this argument "In the case of the Alpine axeheads, their exceptional exchange value was due to the increase in manufacturing costs, a result of the intense polishing of these stones as they passed from one community to another". This is a reference to the adaptability of these tools, due to their amazing durability.

Edited from EurekAlert! and PhysORG (14 Nov 2019)

Stone Age artists mesmerised by horses

Thu, 05 Dec 2019 17:27:29 +0100

Of every four animals drawn upon a cave wall in Stone Age France and Spain, at least one is likely to be a horse, yet these images made thousands of years before humans domesticated horses.
Georges Sauvet, an expert in prehistoric art, has collected more than 4,700 examples of Palaeolithic drawings, paintings and engravings - figurative representations anywhere from 12,000 to 30,000 years old, from what are now France and Spain. Using several statistical analyses, Sauvet shows that horses are portrayed in a noticeably special manner in ancient European art. Nearly 30 percent of all the animals in his collection are horses, and more than three quarters of the sites include at least one image of a horse. While horses and bison together make up roughly half the animals depicted, the horse appears to have a special status. It is found in 44 percent of the panels, and is much more consistently featured than the bison. Usually horses appear larger than lions, rhinos, mammoths, bison, and bears.
Sauvet, who works at the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaures in France, says regional variations are mainly stylistic and thematic: "Even the higher number of hind depictions in the Cantabrian region or the 'preference' for mammoth depictions in the Perigord do not undermine the primacy of the horse as the preferred subject. They chose remarkable locations, at high and visible places to draw large horses. It is as if the choice of spectacular locations served to symbolically signify that horse was 'on the top', above the other species." Sauvet thinks one of the clues is the direction the horses face. While most animals are drawn oriented to the left, horses are the only species that is predominantly oriented to the right. Claude Barriere noticed this in 1997. Sauvet says his own findings confirm Barriere's observation.
According to Sauvet, drawing an animal with perfect proportions on the wall or ceiling of a cave is not easy, and the images of horses are particularly accurate in form, dimensions and situation. In fact, a study in 2012 found that prehistoric humans were better at drawing horses than modern artists.
Sauvet regards rock art as linked to mythical stories, supposing horses might have possessed a sort of mythical status.

Edited from Science Alert (23 November 2019)

Did Neanderthals make eagle talon necklaces?

Sat, 30 Nov 2019 09:39:31 +0100

For tens of thousands of years, Neanderthals lived in small groups scattered across almost the whole of Eurasia. Studies have shown that Neanderthals in different areas ate distinct foods, and we know that tool types varied from place to place and over time.
At Foradada Cave in northeast Spain, archaeologists recently unearthed the tip of a 39,000-year-old Spanish imperial eagle's left big toe with its claw missing, and cut marks suggesting someone had cut off the large, curved talon. Twenty-two other raptor toes found across southern Europe bear similar cut marks: an eagle-owl, a vulture, and 20 other eagles. With one exception the talons all seem to have been taken somewhere else. Archaeologist Antonio Rodriguez and his colleagues suggest that the missing talons and the cut-marked toes are evidence that Neanderthals in southern Europe were making jewelry out of eagle talons.
Neanderthals, especially those living close to the Mediterranean Sea, ate birds fairly often, but large raptors do not seem to have been common menu items. Modern hunter-gatherers also rarely eat large birds of prey. Neanderthals don't seem to have used many bone tools, and there's no evidence of smaller bird talons being used as awls or needles.
Rodriguez and his colleagues argue that Neanderthals at Foradada Cave and elsewhere across southern Europe used eagle talons as talismans, or visible markers of social standing, group membership, or some other aspect of identity. Rodriguez plans to study eagle-talon ornaments from indigenous Australian and North American cultures to compare patterns of cut marks and wear, as well as how each culture used and thought about those objects.
If Rodriguez and his colleagues are right, the talons may also suggest that Neanderthal culture is older than some similar aspects of human culture. The earliest eagle toes with cut marks date to sometime between 120,000 and 130,000 years ago - slightly older than the perforated seashells at Homo sapiens sites in North Africa - meaning that Neanderthals probably developed symbolism on their own, and that Neanderthal culture had continuity. The Foradada Cave bones date to around 42,000 years ago - roughly 80,000 years later than the earliest examples, around the time of the last Neanderthals.

Edited from Ars Technica (20 November 2019)

Drought reveals long lost megaliths in Spain

Fri, 06 Sep 2019 23:37:16 +0100

Low water levels in a reservoir on the River Tagus near Peraleda de la Mata, about 160 kilometres west-southwest of Madrid, have revealed the long submerged Grand Dolmen of Guadalperal. Last seen before the area was flooded in 1963, it dates from the Bronze Age - 4,000 to 5,000 years ago.
The 144 granite stones define a ringed oval burial chamber 5 metres in diameter, an outer ring of stones that supported the tumulus, and an entrance corridor. Some of the stones stand 2 metres high, others have fallen. They are almost completely surrounded by the vestiges of a broad tumulus. At the end of the 21 metre long corridor is a menhir carved with a wavy line and several cup marks - the only stone on which carvings can now be seen.
Archaeologists know the site was damaged by Roman soldiers two millennia ago.
The dolmen stood neglected until the 1920s, when a German priest and archaeology enthusiast excavated the site and took whatever treasures could be moved back to Germany where they are displayed in a museum in Munich. Obermaier's drawings were published in 1960 by Georg and Vera Leisner.
Angel Castanyo, a local resident leading an effort to preserve the site before the rains come, says, "We grew up hearing about the legend of the treasure hidden beneath the lake and now we finally get to view them." He believes the serpentine line on one stone is a map of the river.
One of the few points where it was possible to cross the river, a sizeable town on the opposite side had to be demolished when the dam was built, and the remains of two Roman temples in the old town relocated to a small park by the new bridge.

Edited from The Local (22 August 2019), La Vanguardia, Ancient Origins (23 August 2019), El Español (24 August 2019)

Largest known Iberian-era building discovered

Fri, 23 Aug 2019 08:25:08 +0100

In the middle of the Bronze Age, sometime between 2100 and 1500 BCE, a group of people settled on a cliff more than 60 metres above a strategic north-south route outside what is now the village of Garcinarro, about 85 kilometres east-southeast of Madrid in the province of Cuenca. Iberians occupied it around 400 BCE, and later Romans, then Visigoths, each building on top of it. When archeologists started working the 8 hectare site known as La Cava in 2014, they found the largest known Iberian building; 70 square metres, with three rooms more than 3 metres high.
Besides the building, the complex includes the remains of a Bronze Age settlement, a rampart from that period, and a rocky surface covered with hundreds of small holes. There is also a 7 metre deep, 70-metre long pre-Roman rock-cut gallery, and dozens of coves which would have been occupied during the Visigoth era.
The building's rooms are lined with wall recesses and basins, and on the floors it is still possible to detect evidence of hearths and even the imprints of tables. Finds include ceramics, brooches, and tools from the Iberian era, fragments of terra sigillata tableware from the Roman era, and metal pieces from the Visigoths.

Edited from El Pais (1 August 2019)

People from Africa may have crossed the Strait of Gibraltar 4000 years ago

Wed, 30 Jan 2019 12:32:55 +0100

Ancient people from sub-Saharan Africa may have crossed the Strait of Gibraltar into current-day Spain 1300 years earlier than we thought. A genetic analysis of human samples is the first evidence of such a migration in prehistoric times.
"We are finding that the Strait of Gibraltar was not a barrier for human contact, migration or gene flow between Africa and Spain," says Gloria Maria Gonzalez Fortes at the University of Ferrara in Italy.
Previous research suggested that African genes flowed to Spain and Portugal during the Islamic occupation of Spain, which started in the 8th century and lasted about 800 years. "We found that it may be from a time much earlier than that," says Gonzalez Fortes.
She and her team analysed the DNA from 17 ancient people found on the Iberian Peninsula, from the south of Spain to the north of Portugal, carbon dated to 3000 to 4500 years old. They compared their mitochondrial DNA to archaeological samples from South Africa. They found similarities between the samples from Iberia and Africa, with more African genetic markers in the Spanish samples. This fits with the archaeological record, which shows similarities in tools and pottery decoration made by North African people and those who populated Andalusia in southern Spain.
"4000 years ago, people were already building ships and sailing, so why wouldn't they cross the Strait of Gibraltar? You can see the coast of Africa from the coast of Spain. The sea there is very dangerous, so people were sceptical about this, but it's likely this was the path they took," says Gonzalez Fortes. She says their data show that this migration happened at least 4000 years ago, but it may have happened even earlier.

Edited from New Scientist (23 January 2019)

Cave Art in the Basque country

Fri, 23 Feb 2018 11:01:50 +0100

The area from northern Spain to southern France has long been considered the richest spot for Palaeolithic cave art in the world. Around 150 cave art sites dating from 40,000 to 10,000 years old have been found since the discovery of Altamira in 1879, yet throughout the 20th century only about a dozen caves featuring ancient artwork were found in the Basque country.
From the time that European caves were first explored in the 19th century, the low density of cave art findings in Basque country - an important corridor between the continent and the Iberian Peninsula - has been difficult to explain.
So when Diego Garate and Iñaki Intxaurbe entered the Atxurra cave system in northwest Spain's Basque Country in late 2015, archaeologists had known about the site for over 80 years. But when the two noticed chambers near the high ceiling and started climbing, their lamps revealed the outlines of several previously unknown bison figures.
Since then, researchers using software to reveal artwork invisible to human eyes have identified 20 more cave art sites in Basque country, nearly tripling the total known for the area. In the rest of Europe, there is perhaps one new find a year; in the Pyrenees - one of the hotspots of cave art - there hasn't been a new find for decades.
The Atxurra cave system has been visited since at least 1882, and first explored by archaeologists in the 1930s. Now with the help of specially trained cavers exploring high chambers in the deepest areas of the cave, scientists have identified an 11-metre-long panel of art above a narrow platform 4 metres above the floor, with more than 100 engravings and paintings of deer, horses, bison, and goats. Other finds include sharp flints used for engraving the artwork, and the remains of hearths.
Another Basque country cave the team investigated was hidden below a residential building in the village of Lekeitio. The Armintxe cave's entrance had been covered by rubble in the 1980s, but there was a small entrance hole in a nearby communal garden. Cavers dug this out and climbed inside. In an upper gallery, where the ancient floor had nearly eroded away, they found about 50 engraved animals that had been there for 13,600 to 14,600 years, including two lions - an animal previously seen in cave art in France but never in northern Spain.
In the well known Aitzbitarte cave system, where the team had previously documented scarce cave art, speleologists found several unknown small chambers containing two bison figures and other animals engraved and then lined in clay - a technique previously documented only in France.

Edited from Sapiens.org (16 January 2018)