Cueva de la Pileta

The Pileta is a rock cave in Andalusia (Spain ), in which at the beginning of the 20th century cave paintings were discovered.

Location

The Pileta located west of Ronda in the mountains at an altitude of about 710 meters above sea level. inst and about 3.5 kilometers south of the village Benaoaján, which can be reached by Ronda from approximately 17 driving miles in a southwesterly direction on a winding road (A -373 ).

Discovery and Exploration

In 1905, the grandfather of the present owner discovered when searching for bird and bat droppings as fertilizer for his garden, the former entrance to the cave - one about 30 m deep, in which he hurried down to. Once at the bottom, he soon found pottery shards, remains of hearths and other traces of men, however, were only a few centuries old. Upon further penetration he saw on the walls of small black line pattern that he interpreted as characters or as " combs ". In the years 1909-1911 the ornithological interest British Colonel Verner examined the cave and published a short report in the Saturday Review. This in turn came the famous Abbé Breuil paleontologists note that as part of a scientific expedition explored the cave in 1912; publication of the results was carried out in 1915. In 1924, to facilitate access to the cave was discovered, which is used to this day. In the 1930s, they found more passages and rooms in the lower level ( galería inferior) of the cave system, in which were also the remains of human skeletons.

Drawings

Age

After the end of the last ice age, ie, before about 20,000 to 15,000 years ago, the living conditions for plants, animals, and even humans ( Homo sapiens) were significantly better. The hunter-gatherers found enough food and had to make seem to have enough time to their environment. The drawings found in the Cueva de la Pileta are now divided into three periods: the Aurignacian ( age about 20,000 years), the Solutrean ( 15,000 years) and the Magdalenian period ( about 10,000 years)

Materials

As colors you used different colored earths ( yellowish- brown red ocher, black manganese earth or charcoal, red iron oxide, white lime) that are mixed with animal fat and were applied with the fingers ( possibly with small branches ). However, the murals in the Pileta are mostly colorless ( black) or single color (red ). The overall picture of the images in the Pileta is therefore much easier and schematic as for example in the caves of Altamira or Lascaux.

Representations

The first drawings with the representations of a horse and the head and horns of a bull can be found in the " nave " ( nature central). In an adjoining room ( salón ) a stag, a reindeer, a ( promising? ) Horse and several mountain goats are seen. The following " hall of the pond " ( sala del lago ), there are several drawings of cattle. A few years ago the drawings of a goat and a jumping deer were discovered. Perhaps most interesting, the presentation of an archer in the " Hall of the Moorish Queen " is ( sala de la reina mora ), which is just about to draw his bow. The last room is the " Hall of the fish " ( sala del pez ), which is named after a large fish - an unprecedented representation from prehistoric times. By far the largest number of drawings however, consists of linear or dotted patterns, whose meaning can only be speculated - several motifs with several parallel lines are called " combs " interpreted, but we have discovered so far no archaeological finds of this kind.

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