The Cave of Altamira

I have been lucky enough to have visited the Cave of Altamira twice in my life, the first one as a child in the 1960’s where we were able to take a guided tour into the actual cave itself to see the paleolithic masterpieces painted on the walls and the ceiling first hand. 

Given that the cave closed in 2001 to protect the art, my second visit was with my wife and we visited the re-creation of the cave at the museum near the cave in Altamira.  The re-creation was done in painstaking detail and is said to be an exact replica of what one would see if you entered the actual cave. 

The first time was a breathtaking event, I couldn’t imagine how anyone, let alone a primitive being, could have painted such majestic works of art with such detail on stone and with such vibrant colors.  Not only did they paint on the ceilings, they used the contours of the rocks to help them define their paintings!

Altamira Cave Paintings of Bison

I remember walking through the cold, damp chambers of the cave staring up at the ceiling wondering how the original painters created the paint that gave the figures their vibrant colors. They used bright yellows, reds and blacks, especially in the darkness of the cave.  Turns out that the area in and around the cave is rich with minerals and they artists were able to craft their paints by mixing the ground minerals (like Ochre) with animal fat as a binder to get the rich colors.

As we walked deeper into the cave the guide asked us to hold our hand up to our faces, he then turned off the lights in the cave and we couldn’t see our hands, even though they were inches from our face. 

This makes you wonder how the paintings were done with minimal light and in the dampness of the cave.  Lighting fires in the cave was not an option for the artists in that there was much too much soot deposited on the walls and ceiling as a result of the fire. 

It wasn’t until Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, the owner of the property that includes the caves and its first caretaker and researcher, discovered that candles crafted by using animal fat and a wick could be burned without the release of soot that the process was understood more thoroughly.  

Until that time, he was considered a charlatan and that the paintings were a hoax, painted by him or someone he hired. Unfortunately, he never got the credit he deserved for the discovery and research during his lifetime. 

Most of the figures depicted are those of bison, horses and goats. Interestingly enough, no bones of those animals have ever been found in the cave, which leads one to assume that these paintings were done completely from memory of what they looked like roaming wild around the fields of the cave.

Purple Depiction of a Horse at the Tito Bustillo Cave

Since the discovery of Altamira, there have been several other significant discoveries of other caves in the northern part of Spain that contain Paleolithic and Neolithic masterpieces, one of the nearby caves (Tito Bustillo – Paleolithic) was inhabited by humans (Cro-Magnon) before the year 10,000 BC. It contains a depiction of a purple/violet horse, a rare entity given its color.

The pigment is pyrolusite (manganese dioxide) from a small deposit of clay at the original entrance of the cave.

There is a wonderful movie about the discovery of the cave with the actor Antonio Banderas who plays the title role of Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, the researcher and advocate of Altamira.  The film is entitled “Finding Altamira” and I highly recommend seeing it.