The website has an unpublished panel of artwork, thought-about probably the most related discoveries of the Mediterranean arc. There are a number of hypotheses concerning the symbology of the works and the state of the cavity, which has completely maintained the diploma of conservation of the engravings. Children too they painted some prehistoric caves in Spain
Tarragona hides within the bowels of a cave a panel greater than 8 meters lengthy, with greater than 100 prehistoric engravings. A hidden treasure that has been sealed as if it had been “a time capsule” within the Cova de la Vila de La Febró, which retains the unpublished panel of artwork intact, thought-about probably the most related discoveries of the Mediterranean arc.
The discovery of the engravings, made between 7,000 and three,000 years in the past, is made up of figures of animals and objects that would characterize idols and enigmatic symbols. The compositions had been uncovered on May 13, 2021, when a gaggle of speleologists discovered a small gap that led them to an oval room of greater than 90 sq. meters.
The website was found for the primary time in 1940 by means of the excavation of Salvador Vilaseca, a pharmacist and prehistorian. Among his discoveries was the collapse query, which he stopped digging when he discovered “nothing fascinating” past human skeletons and ceramic stays. An exploration that was resumed years later by the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) along with the ERE speleological group of the Catalonia Hikers Center and the Aliga Hikers Center (SIE-CEA), which managed to open entry to a small gap between blocks and sediments.
Cova de la Vila de la FebróGovern
“We had been on the lookout for this La Febró cave for years as a result of the documentation instructed us that it could possibly be an fascinating website. The location, after Vilaseca’s publication, had been misplaced. Nobody had returned to this cavity, in the midst of the mountain. Nobody knew how you can find it. The shock was nice once they entered the big room and noticed a wall stuffed with engravings”, explains Doctor Antonio Rodríguez-Hidalgo, researcher at l’IPHES and co-director of the Febró challenge.
The authenticity of the compositions is a relic within the prehistoric artwork of the japanese Mediterranean, which works from the Pyrenees to the Strait of Gibraltar. “It is a schematic and summary artwork made in a cave, it is vitally distinctive inside this Mediterranean arc, which is often represented in rocky shelters and out of doors as massive stone panels”
In truth, there are some examples of engravings made on help of cavities, however with few figures not like the Cova de la Vila, which has greater than 100 parts, a few of them schematic. “We see a determine as an alternative of recognizing a human with all its particulars, as Renaissance artwork can be. What is appreciated is a type of stick determine, the human determine turns into a circuit that represents the top and 4 sticks that characterize the physique and extremities”.
Cova de la Vila de la FebróGovern
A method that can be transferred to the animal world. “We discovered a sequence of quadrupeds, it is vitally troublesome to know if they’re goats, sheep, horses or bulls. What we see are ‘animals’, on all fours, with solely a distinction between the top, the tail and their extremities”.
However, the opposite half is summary, equal to a “extra up to date” artwork, such because the compositions of Antoni Tàpies. “We see issues which are very troublesome to interpret. You see stripes, spots, circles that characterize complete abstraction,” Antonio provides concerning the paths that “most likely” won’t ever recuperate their actual which means.
Despite this, the totally different hypotheses of its symbology go from advanced analyzes to “probably the most simplistic”, resembling a illustration out of boredom. “When the goat herders of the Neolithic or Copper Age had been placing away their coats, they devoted themselves to portray on the partitions issues that made sense to them, or to go away their signature and transcend,” says the researcher, who compares it with the signatures of the individuals of the city tribes within the subway or practice of town”.
On the opposite hand, the works is also a illustration of the cosmology of the inhabitants 1000’s of years in the past. “An virtually sacred sort of artwork that got here to characterize the conception of the world of those locations. Therefore, their environments had been used inside advanced rituals, such because the passage from childhood to adolescence, or associated to the mortuary world.”
cavity situation
The identical occurs with the state of the cavity, the place they discovered an actual treasure. “We suppose it was closed on the time the artwork panel was made. Probably through the Copper Age or early Bronze Age. It was sealed by a landslide and nobody has ever gone inside once more till our companions found within the 12 months 2021 the doorway to the room”.
An unprecedented house that has completely maintained the diploma of conservation of the engravings, which is why it additionally leaves a large spectrum of meanings. “We have virtually a very intact website. This cavity has been sealed as if it had been a time capsule, reinforcing the extent of conservation. In different locations, publicity to the weather and the reuse of these partitions to make engravings by different extra trendy cultures has disturbed the stays.”
Therefore, the choice that the cave was sealed to avoid wasting its relics for the long run is just not solely unreasonable. “We are learning it. In May we are going to start the second archaeological marketing campaign to find out how the sediment plug was fashioned. One chance is that the cave had been sealed by the inhabitants itself. Another different can be {that a} landslide, after a storm or detachment from the primary entrance, would have sealed the cavity utterly by accident”.
Precisely, in areas of the identical chronology, they used the caves as cemeteries, by which they discovered their entrance sealed with rows of stone. “Cavities usually seem by which we discover human skeletons of this kind of inhabitants. Similar to massive household vaults. In this case we have to resort to excavation to certify whether or not the sealing has adhered to pure causes or was intentional,” concludes Antonio.
The Generalitat, the City Council and Iphes have labored to shut each the outside and inside of the cave and assure its bodily conservation, and to consolidate its safety, the Government has declared the location as a Bé Cultural d’Interés Nacional within the class of archaeological zone .
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