Siega Verde

Siega Verde is a reference prehistoric rock carvings along the Rio Agueda in the west of Spain. The recognition as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage took place in 2010 during an expansion of the 1998 is protected and is approximately 80 kilometers in a straight line ( = approx 100 km ride ) located north-west, world heritage site of Vale do Côa, Portugal.

Location

The site is located about two kilometers west of the village Castillejo de Martín Viejo, so therefore, about 15 kilometers northwest of the town of Ciudad Rodrigo in the province of Salamanca.

Discovery history

The drawings were the population of the area has long been known, but they arrived only in 1988 by a research journey of two archaeologists from the University of Salamanca, Manuel Santoja and Rosario Pérez, the focus of research and thus a wider public.

Petroglyphs

In total, over 500 engravings were discovered at 94 sites, of which only a few come close in their precision and expressiveness to the cave paintings of Altamira or Lascaux along an approximately three kilometers long river section. Shown are mainly horses, bulls, deer and goats. Also a drawing of a wool rhino believed to be able to identify. The processing of the stone was performed by scratching and banging with others, usually harder stones, but only the outline of the animals are shown - remain the areas of the body itself, as in petroglyphs usual, unprocessed.

Dating

The age of the drawings is estimated at 13000-20000 years, and attributed to the Palaeolithic culture stages of the Gravettian and Magdalenian.

Importance

Together with the roughly contemporary rock carvings in the Parque Archaeological do Vale do Côa in today's Portugal, they form the most important complex of petroglyphs on the Iberian Peninsula.