Archaeology handicrafts and science and technology sites to visit Cantabria

The cave had long been known to the villages surrounding the villages, but it was only in the early 1970 s that it was the subject of a excavations campaign that would update all the treasures it contains. With a rather modest size, she houses beautiful engravings and red paintings depicting deer, goats and bovines. Some of them are depicted in full strokes and others, as in the cave of Covalanas, dotted. The cave was also used as a residential space at the Solutréen.

The large central panel of the vestibule is certainly the most admirable in the cave. There is a bison and biches as well as a fish, which is more rare in the Cantabrian caves. Inside, you will also note an anthropomorphic silhouette, which is also very rare for this time. But it is mainly for the quantity of signs and symbols made at the point of the finger that the cave of Chufín owes its reputation. We find it in many places, without linking them, and without knowing its meaning. Codes, plans, first drafts of beliefs? Signs in prehistoric times do not have their Rosette stone yet and keep their mystery for them.

Less impressive than Covalanas by his paintings, Cullalvera is by his spectacular and immense mouth. Located in the heart of the village, the gallery measures no less than 12 km long, half in the straight line. So much more easily than in the small gallery of Covalanas. The paintings were discovered in 1954. Opened to the public in 2007, it offers enough space to accommodate stage spaces and also lends itself to geological observation with beautiful concretions all along the walls.

The paintings are concentrated in a sector several hundred metres from the entrance. What, as in Covalanas, presupposes that they were in total darkness and visible only by artificial lighting. There are many signs and symbols as well as horses and deer.

Certainly the most moving collection of rock paintings in the Iberian Peninsula. If the gallery is smaller than in other caves and fewer paintings, they were designed and realized not as isolated drawings but as a real work of art with subjects communicating between themselves and with the visitor as the latter advances in the cave. Light games and wall shapes are studied to give the best possible movements and prospects. It is really the great art that you recommend to discover on guided tour to do nothing to lose the very many details that make Covalanas such a particular cave. The narrow gallery imposes small groups, 7 or 8 people maximum, which facilitates contact with the works as with the guide. Rarely will you have the opportunity to be so close to original paintings in a good state of conservation!

The cave is 2,5 km from the city centre. A very pleasant hiking trail makes it possible to walk on foot, as long as you face the difference of just over 200 m. It is a good way to discover the beautiful panoramas surrounding the cave. Many populations were believed to inhabit caves in prehistoric times. A total of 14 caves decorated with paintings or engravings were found in the vicinity.

Covalanas is a space entirely dedicated to painting, a kind of cinema or prehistoric museum. Research has indeed shown that places of habitation were lower on the mountain, and only painting tools were found in the cave itself. The artist or artists came here only to exercise their art, with a goal that we still don't know. In any case, they painted in a place where the only way to see paintings was to bring light. At 65 metres from the entrance to the cave, the gallery is actually diving in the dark, and lighting to lamps should help to give movement effects to the animals represented.

The paintings would be 7 000 years older than the Altamira bison and the Mammoths of Lascaux. The animals represented here are deer and biches, animals placed very high in the Mammal Pantheon represented on Hispanic walls. The technique used is that of pointillism: you will notice that the strokes are not full but formed of point alignments obtained by placing the inch, coated with manganese oxide, on the wall.

There are about twenty figures, including a buffalo and a horse, all others are biches or deer. Although it is difficult to interpret the will of the artist, you will notice that the overall scheme responds to a plan and that the choice of locations is nothing insignificant. The animals seem to be watching us, moving away or repprocher from us depending on where we are in the gallery, without any failure in the route. At some distances, the biches of the entrance of the gallery might seem true, as the watchtower while the others are already fleeing upon arrival. We will certainly never know the motivations of the artist of Covalanas, and if the visit of the cave does not provide answers, she at least has the merit of urging us to question the meaning of these paintings and the message they give us.

3 km from the village of Miera, the caves offered shelters that our hunter-gatherers were certainly attending 10 to 30 000 years. For the time being, they had a high quality of life with a favourable climate during the summer months. They lived from hunting, most of the large animals following river valleys to migrate or simply drink, but also to fish thanks to abundant salmon, often very large as evidenced by the fossils found.

The caves of Salitre, closed to the public for conservation (but whose cave of Sopeña offers some reproductions), had a residential use but, at least two times, around 18 000 and 15 000 BC, or two periods of the upper Paleolithic (the Solutréen and the Magdalénien), they also served as rock sanctuaries. The reproduction of the cave and the fac of the many updated paintings in the original caves can be seen in the Sopeña. The opportunity to follow a visit that combines archaeology, rock art and geology.

In the livable part, that is, the mouth of the cavity, have been reconstituted from residential areas where they are exposed to everyday objects used by our ancestors to cook, hunt, paint, dress, manufacture tools, lit and maintain fire…

In the plus part of the gallery, sheltered from light, there are cave paintings: red, drawn to manganese oxide, and black, drawn to carbon. Deer, biches and horses are the dominant silhouettes on the different panels.

The guided tour will take you further into the cave which is also a geological marvel with many natural sculptures formed by time, water and erosion. This was where the cave bears were hibernate, which shared the caves with the first men. Sopeña has been found several skeletons of dead bears during their sleep.