HISTORICAL DICTIONARY A–Z - Spain and Portugal: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 333

uncovered as early as 1868 by a hunter.
During the next decade a local gentleman
amateur found animal bones that led him
to pursue further investigations and finally
to work his way into a cavern that con-
tained an amazing discovery. Not fully
revealed and explored until the early 1880s,
the Altamira caves were found to contain
scores of paintings and etchings on their
walls depicting such animals as prehistoric
bison and deer. Dating back some 15,000
years, these paintings were amazingly col-
orful (making use of natural materials to
provide vivid reds, violets, and blacks).
These images were accompanied by trac-
ings that outlined the hands of the ancient
artists. So outstanding was the level of skill
and sensibility disclosed by the Altamira
paintings that some at first refused to
believe that they were authentic. Eventu-
ally, after they were authenticated in their
dating, they became a national treasure of
Spain, guarded against air pollution and
temperature change.
During the hundred years that followed
the discoveries at Altamira Spain experi-
enced political and military disasters and
prolonged dictatorship. In such an environ-
ment the history of Spain seemed to many
to be the cause of their present miseries,
and few could spare the thought for the
mysteries of its prehistoric dwellers and the
legacy they had left at Altamira. Then, in
the 1990s, as Spain was reemerging into
the light of modern day, scholars and
searchers found their way once again into
the subterranean domains where the
remains of remote antiquity still lay.
In 1994, at Atapuerca, in the hills of
northern Spain, the remains of what are
believed to be the oldest human inhabitants
of Europe were discovered. As with the

findings at Altamira, which disproved the
presumed low level of human development
that had existed 15,000 years before the
cave paintings were found, so the discover-
ies at Atapuerca dispelled the belief that
humankind's earliest evolutionary prede-
cessors had not set foot in Europe until
about 500,000 B . C . At Atapuerca the
remains of the first Europeans, when sub-
jected to dating technology, doubled that
estimate. The first discoveries at Atapuerca
gave evidence of extremely early hominid
presence in Europe (skulls, bones, and
crude implements). A nearby deep crevice
proved a much later hominid residence in
the same area, which showed prolonged
habitation. Moreover it gave substantiation
of what had been called “human” behavior.
The skeletal remains in this narrow cleft
seemed to have been placed there after
death in a burial ritual, suggesting an
emerging sensibility or, as some have ven-
tured to suggest, an emerging spirituality.
Carefully shaped hand axes placed with the
bodies disclosed not only a high degree of
skilled workmanship but a possible desire
to send some product of their lives with
them on a journey into the afterlife. Fur-
thermore this group of remains is believed
to date from approximately 400,000 B . C .
and to represent what has been called the
evolutionary “grandfathers” of the Nean-
derthal species. Some paleontologists
believe that these remains are in fact com-
mon ancestors of Neanderthals and the first
true “modern men.”
Atapuerca lies 150 miles north of M ADRID .
Within its complex of prehistoric remains,
Gran Dolina, the site where the initial
remains were uncovered, has been, in a
sense, “known” since the late 19th century,
when a part of the hillside was sheared off