An article in NewScientist by James Woodford - 'Stunning collection of prehistoric engravings found in Spanish cave' - reports on the close examination of a frequently visited cave wall in Spain which has revealed a spectacular assembly of rock art engravings thought to be at least 19,000 years old.
Despite a cave in Spain being a popular tourist attraction, an unnoticed gallery of hundreds of prehistoric engraved motifs and animal images has come to light. Josep Maria Vergès, from the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology, rediscovered the rock art at Cova de la Font Major, west of Barcelona, after a tourist group caught his attention.
The spelunkers in wetsuits had emerged from a nearby opening that led into a small side gallery; “Since it was my first time working at the site and I was unfamiliar with this side gallery, I went to take a look,” declared Vergès.
Upon entering, he saw that the walls were covered with names and dates engraved by people who had passed through the gallery since 1957. To examine them more closely, he removed his helmet and used the headlamp to illuminate the wall with raking light – a technique used to observe engravings because it creates shadows in the incised grooves.
“Almost immediately, among the modern graffiti, I noticed a series of vertical lines that appeared ancient,” says Vergès. “I moved slightly and spotted another one. Then, as I turned toward the opposite wall and shone the light across its surface, the horse appeared and I realised it was executed in a Palaeolithic style.” He also immediately discovered that there were “many more engravings, many of them figurative representations of different animals.”
So far, 280 motifs have been recorded in the gallery, including 55 animal figures, making the cave one of the richest and most important archaeological finds along the Iberian coast between the Pyrenees and Gibraltar.
One challenge for archaeologists is that it is extremely difficult to date the engravings themselves, but human occupation in the cave has been dated to between 26,000 and 41,000 years ago and, based on the style, the art is likely to be over 19,000 years old.
Team member Míriam Salas-Altès, also at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution, says one of the most outstanding figures is a hind, or adult female deer, depicted with its head lowered, its muzzle extending across a natural fissure. The crack appears to have been deliberately incorporated into the composition as the surface of a body of water from which the hind is drinking. Salas-Altès explains “If this hypothesis is correct, the scene would constitute one of the earliest known representations of water in human artistic expression.,”
Among the non-figurative engravings, the team identified groups of lines arranged in twos, threes or fours and, in some cases, series of up to 40 straight, parallel lines, as well as Y-shaped signs and circular or semi-circular shapes. “As for what they represent, that question has led to dozens of different theories,” says Vergès. “Unfortunately, the code needed to understand its message has not fossilised.”
Paul Taçon at Griffith University in Australia says the discovery fills a large gap in our knowledge of the distribution of Palaeolithic art in western Europe. While the exact age of the rock art is yet to be determined, it is “obvious”, he believes, that it was made by a Palaeolithic culture and “It is exciting that new discoveries at long-visited sites are revealing ancient evidence of a very early painting tradition.”
- Published online by Cambridge University Press
- 05 November 2026
- 'Filling gaps: the Palaeolithic rock art of the Cova de la Font Major on the north-east Iberian Peninsula'
- Josep Maria Vergès Bosch and Míriam Salas-Altès
- Journal reference: Antiquity DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2026.10447
Bradshaw Foundation
15 October 2026
Bradshaw Foundation
7 July 2026
