• La Cueva de Ardales newspaper archive, the first Andalusian paleolithic vein on the European Itinerary

They are probably the

oldest known cave paintings in the world

and now an international team of researchers has corroborated the human origin of the red marks that were discovered in the

Ardales cave (in Malaga)

and that were made about

65,000 years ago

.

Researchers, who maintain that these marks do not have a natural origin, have also verified that

the Neanderthals would have accessed

this cave

on several occasions

to symbolically mark a stalagmite located in the middle of a large room in an intentional and repeated way.

Scientists from the University of Cádiz, the University of Barcelona, ​​the National Center for Scientific Research of the University of Bordeaux and the Neanderthal Museum of Germany have participated in the research, and the results are published today in the American journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

(PNAS).

Researchers have corroborated that, despite what the most critical scientific voices maintain,

the red marks on the stalagmite are the result of human activity

and that the ocher they used to make these paintings would have been collected outside the room. cave.

The research has involved, among others, the professors José Ramos (Prehistory) and Salvador Domínguez-Bella (Crystallography and Mineralogy) and the scientist Pedro Cantalejo, from the University of Cádiz;

and the researchers Africa Pitarch Martí and Joao Zilhao, from the University of Barcelona.

The main research centers that have intervened in the work have highlighted today that one of the main challenges of archeology is to determine when the symbols appeared and what implications their use had on human behavior.

They have also pointed out that

the oldest paintings found so far are those of three Spanish caves

, located in Cáceres, Cantabria and Malaga, which would be about 65,000 years old, although their dating, according to the centers, has unleashed a

debate very intense in the scientific community

, because it suggests that the paintings would have been made by Neanderthals.

In paintings analyzed in the islands of Borneo and Sulawesi (Indonesia) minimum ages of 39,900 and 43,900 years respectively have been obtained and dated.

Another example is that of the

El Castillo

cave

(Cantabria), where a minimum age of 40,800 years has been obtained for a red disc;

and the oldest chronologies, up to 64,800 years old, correspond to a hand (in

Maltravieso

, Cáceres), a set of linear strokes forming a symbol similar to a ladder (in

La Pasiega

, Cantabria) and a group of colored stalagmites (

Ardales

, Malaga).

But these latest chronologies have been the subject of controversy, because they would indicate that these artistic manifestations appeared at least

20,000 years before the arrival of modern men to the European continent

, which points to a Neanderthal authorship.

The most skeptical have doubted that the red marks on the surface of the great stalagmitic dome in the Ardales cavern are of human origin and maintain that they could be natural deposits, but the researchers have verified in this new study that they were made with a ocher-based pigment and applied in a deliberate way.

This cavity in Malaga is

one of the most important caves with Palaeolithic wall art in southern Europe

and more than a thousand graphic representations have already been recorded, both abstract and figurative, and inside tools have also been found for the processing of dyes and fragments. of pigments.

The location and distribution of the marks, as well as the size and morphology of the crystals that make up these red residues in the stalagmite rule out that they are deposits of natural origin, according to the researchers.

The research assumes the

verification that Neanderthal populations were perfectly organized societies

, in their social, economic and symbolic aspects, as explained by Professor José Ramos in a note released by the University of Cádiz.

For his part, the researcher Joao Zilhao, from the University of Barcelona, ​​has observed that the data from the Ardales cave and other Iberian caves with wall art made more than 65,000 years ago reveal that

the underground world played a fundamental role in symbolic systems.

of Neanderthal communities.

In a note released by the University of Barcelona, ​​the researchers have pointed out that the action of repeatedly marking with red pigment such imposing formations as the Ardales dome suggests that their authors wanted to highlight and perpetuate the importance of this location through narratives transmitted between generations.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Malaga

  • Cantabria

  • Cáceres

  • Africa

  • Indonesia

  • Europe

SummitThe G20 makes "progress" in Venice towards the global tax for multinationals

TourismSpanish tourism, again in the focus of Europe due to the fifth wave

Chronicle Stop!

Picasso's 'Head of a Woman' thief betrayed by his former Dutch lover

See links of interest

  • Last News

  • Translator

  • Olympic Games Tokyo

  • Work calendar

  • Home THE WORLD TODAY

  • Master Investigation Journalism

  • Spain - Russia, live