Around 100 carvings of animals including horses, oxen and deer, as well as mysterious abstract symbols, were found in a cave in the village of L'Espluga de Francolí.
The ancient artworks were revealed on Friday after being discovered in the wake of floods last October. The engravings are extremely delicate, with archaeologists warning that even the slightest touch can damage them.
Some of the figures have been eroded by the passage of time, and researchers are speculating that the cave may have contained even more figures that were washed away by erosion.
At 15,000 years old, the cave art is among the oldest in the Mediterranean. Experts date it back to the Magdalenian period of the Upper Paleolithic portion of the Old Stone Age. This makes it a contemporary of the famous Cave of Altamira, which is renowned for its charcoal paintings of bison and other animals.
Researchers are in the process of copying the cave's walls with 3D technology to gain a deeper understanding of them, and of the people who created the carvings all those years ago.
[Link] Album (their best?) The Royal Scam.
Lyrics (Beginning):
recall when I was small
How I spent my days alone
The busy world was not for me
So I went and found my own
I would climb the garden wall
With a candle in my hand
I'd hide inside a hall of rock and sand
On the stone an ancient hand
In a faded yellow-green
Made alive a worldly wonder
Often told but never seen
Now and ever bound to labor
On the sea and in the sky
Every man and beast appeared
A friend as real as I Before the fall when they wrote it on the wall
When there wasn't even any Hollywood
They heard the call
And they wrote it on the wall
For you and me we understood.
RC