Cueva de la Pileta
The Cueva de la Pileta is a rock cave in Andalusia ( Spain ), in which cave paintings were discovered at the beginning of the 20th century .
location
The Cueva de la Pileta is located in the mountains west of Ronda at an altitude of about 710 meters above sea level. d. M. and about 3.5 kilometers south of the village of Benaoján , which can be reached from Ronda after about 17 kilometers in a south-westerly direction via a winding road (A-373).
Discovery and Exploration
In 1905, while looking for bird and bat droppings as fertilizer for his garden , the grandfather of the current owner discovered what was then the entrance to the cave - a thirty-meter-deep throat, into which he rappelled. Once at the bottom, he soon found ceramic shards, remains of fireplaces and other traces of people that were only a few centuries old. As he advanced, he saw small black line patterns on the walls, which he interpreted as characters or as "combs". In the years 1909–1911 the British Colonel Verner, who was interested in ornithology, examined the cave and published a short report in the Saturday Review . This in turn came to the knowledge of the famous palaeontologist Abbé Breuil , who explored the cave in 1912 as part of a scientific expedition; the results were published in 1915. In 1924, easier access to the cave was discovered, which is still in use today. In the 1930s, more corridors and rooms were found in the lower level ( galería inferior ) of the cave system, in which there were also remains of human skeletons. In 2019, additional chambers were found below the chamber, which can be reached during a guided tour, and which can only be reached by abseiling and diving.
drawings
Age
After the end of the last ice age, around 20,000 to 15,000 years ago, the living conditions for plants and animals and thus also for humans ( Homo sapiens ) became significantly better. The hunters and gatherers found enough food and apparently had enough time to shape their environment. The drawings found in the Cueva de la Pileta are now assigned to three epochs: the Aurignacien (age approx. 20,000 years), the Solutréen (approx. 15,000 years) and the Magdalenian (approx. 10,000 years)
materials
Different colored earths were used as colors (yellowish-brown-red ocher, black manganese earth or charcoal, red iron oxide, white lime), which were mixed with animal fat and applied with the fingers (possibly also with small branches). The murals in the Cueva de la Pileta , however, are predominantly colorless (black) or monochrome (red). The overall picture of the pictures in the Cueva de la Pileta is thus much simpler and more schematic than z. B. in the caves of Altamira or Lascaux .
Representations
The first drawings depicting a horse and the head and horns of a bull can be found in the so-called "main nave" ( nave central ). In an adjoining room ( salón ) you can see a deer, a reindeer, a (pregnant?) Horse and several mountain goats. In the “Hall of the Pond” ( sala del lago ) below there are several drawings of cattle. Only a few years ago the drawings of a billy goat and a jumping deer were discovered. Perhaps the most interesting is the depiction of an archer in the "Hall of the Moorish Queen" ( sala de la reina mora ) who is just about to draw his bow. The last room is the “Fish Room” ( sala del pez ), which is named after a large fish - a so far unique representation from prehistoric times. The vast majority of drawings, however, consist of linear or dotted patterns, the meaning of which can only be speculated - some motifs with several parallel lines are interpreted as “crests”, but no archaeological finds of this kind have yet been discovered.
See also
There are other cave paintings near the Spanish Levant coast , e.g. B. in the Cueva del Parpalló near Gandía and the Cueva de las Malladetes near Bárig .
literature
- Andrew J. Lawson: Painted Caves: Palaeolithic Rock Art in Western Europe. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2012, pp. 382ff, ISBN 978-0-19969-822-6
Web links
Coordinates: 36 ° 41 ′ 28 " N , 5 ° 16 ′ 12" W.