CAVE ROUTES OF SPAIN, THE PATHS OF THE FIRST ART OF EUROPE IN THE IBERIAN PENINSULA.

CCave art from the Cantabrian Corniche, petroglyphs of Galicia, rock shelters and outcrops of the Iberian Meseta and the Peninsular Mediterranean Basin, megalithic art and other troglodytic expressions… humanity's first (rock) art is open for society to discover, across Spain.

We are all an African subspecies, strange and unique within our biological order, the primates. We are also barely newcomers; the first Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH) appeared just over 200,000 years ago and from Africa spread – with some rapidity – across the entire planet: 100,000 years ago we were in the Near East, 60,000 years ago we reached Asia, 45,000 years ago we were at the gates of Europe, and 15,000 years ago we arrived in the Americas. Except in the polar regions, we are capable of surviving everywhere. Such an ability to adapt is unknown among mammals.

There are many things that characterise the only group in the Hominid family to have reached the Holocene (the current geological period, which began with the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago), meaning, those that characterise all of us… The capacity for adaptation is one of them, our high capability to develop manual skills (which allows us to create sophisticated tools and devices) is another, but perhaps our enormous capacity for abstraction and planning is the most unique. And that is not to say “our intelligence”, because Neanderthals, Denisovans, Erectus, Floresiensis, Heidelbergensis and other earlier human species and subspecies were also intelligent – albeit possibly in a different way-. Nor is it our taste for the beautiful and our capacity to capture information in our minds and represent things, something that Neanderthals and other preceding groups also did.

But without denying anything to Pleistocene ancestors and contemporaries (during the Middle and Upper Pleistocene, no fewer than 5 human subspecies coexisted on the planet), there is something surprising about us, and that is our capacity for the symbolic, our predisposition to draw, engrave, model... the first symptom that Sapiens, the last to arrive and the one that endured at the end of the glacial periods was, is, special, or at least, different…

The term Rock art –“rock art” in the etymological sense– is used to denote the paintings, engravings and reliefs made on natural, immovable rocks by prehistoric human groups; it is also applied to similar art carried out by tribes (contemporary prehistoric groups) from the modern and contemporary eras. The term, as we can see, does not have a chronological value in itself. Culturally, both prehistoric groups and those closer to our time (Australian Aborigines, Inuit, African San people, etc.) share similar technological levels (lack of metallurgy, or with it in a very basic phase), and comparable social organisation, which can be associated with the designation or “state” of “bands” or “tribes”. More important is the observation that we are mostly referring to groups with a predatory economy – hunters and gatherers – or in which hunting played an important economic or cultural role (Palaeolithic rock art), although there are also expressions of rock art linked to extensive land occupation and the origins of transhumance practices (Neolithic and Metal Age rock art).

Rock art undoubtedly constitutes the most enduring and universal artistic expression: the only one with 40,000 years of uninterrupted relevance and a distribution across the entire Earth. Some estimates place the number of geographical zones with rock art on our planet at around 4,000. The main ones, by virtue of their scale or uniqueness, are found in the deserts of North America (southern USA and northern Mexico) and various areas of Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina-Bolivia-Paraguay, the great plateaus of Central Asia, between the Caspian Sea and China, central and northern Australia, central and southern Africa, and in Europe, Scandinavia and Finland, Atlantic coastal areas, large valleys in the south of France and north of Italy, and practically the entire Iberian Peninsula.

The importance and significance of this heritage is also reflected in the long list of rock art sites inscribed on the World Heritage List, which includes 48 rock art sites or areas (http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/rockartnetwork/unesco_world_heritage_sites_rock_art/index.php?fbclid=IwAR3y9keCiShKaSEm53qXkAKuFVlKIrRB_7pQFovI7haoMyf_ufeCvQ59AdQ). Europe, with over 900 areas containing significant concentrations of rock art sites, boasts 9 of these UNESCO designations, making it one of the best-known and most significant regions in the world, as it is home to more than 40% of all the sites – which have been identified and documented to some extent– of rock art in the world. However, the geographical distribution of rock art in Europe is by no means uniform, and there are large gaps in the distribution of this prehistoric art. This is due to various bioclimatic and geological factors that limited human occupation in Europe during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene. Thus, the formation of ice sheets during the Würm IV (around 30,000 to 10,000 years ago) greatly reduced the possibility of inhabiting the continent, and the areas suitable for human habitation by Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer groups were restricted to south-western Europe. Similarly, at the start of the Holocene, when improving climatic conditions allowed the repopulation of the centre and north of the continent, human populations in these regions were clearly smaller than in the south, at least initially.

The Iberian Peninsula is, without a shadow of a doubt, the region with the greatest quantity and diversity of styles (cultural and chronological) of rock art in Europe. No fewer than 3,000 sites with rock art have been documented in Spain alone, mainly featuring Schematic art (the most widespread and frequent art), Levantine art (with almost 900 shelters), Palaeolithic art (around 200 caves and open-air sites), and Macro-schematic art (the most peculiar and scarce art).

The Cultural Itinerary of the Council of Europe Prehistoric Rock Art Trails ( https://www.coe.int/en/web/cultural-routes/prehistoric-rock-art-trails ) offers 102 major archaeological rock art sites in Spain of great scientific, cultural, artistic, and archaeological interest, all of which are open for the knowledge and enjoyment of European and world society. Currently, over 1.5 million visitors come each year to the sites where the first inhabitants of our species left their transcendental Rock Art, an art full of symbolism related to spiritual beliefs and inspired by references to Nature, which shaped the first Cultural Landscapes of the Iberian Peninsula.

These destinations have been put together into 15 regional (and themed) itineraries that can be enjoyed on trips lasting between 2 and 5 days:

1. Basque Country Palaeolithic
2. The land of Altamira
3. Caves and landscapes of Eastern Asturias
4. Rock climbing
5. Pontevedra Petroglyph Trail
6. Schematic art of Extremaduran Prehistory
7. Rock art of the Northern Plateau
8. The rock art of light, from the Central System to the Águeda River
9. Cave shelters route of La Mancha
10. Andalusian Rock Art Route
11. Route of the Levantine hunter-gatherers of the Southeast Iberian Peninsula
12. Route of the Great Levantine Shelters
13. Rock church route of the Cultural Parks of Aragon
14. Cave art in La Rioja
15. Gran Canaria, island of rock

Ramón Montes Barquín (Doctor of Archaeology and Prehistory. Coordinator of the Council of Europe's Cultural Route of Prehistoric Rock Art)