Some Old Paintings

You never know quite what this area will throw up next as we learn more about the history and culture of the region.  At this time of year as the Moors & Christians fiestas begin, the focus is of course mostly on the Christian Reconquest of Spain through the middle ages but people have been living here long before even the Moors arrived.  A few traces remain of the lives of the pre-Roman era people - for example there are some walls of a 2,500 year old village on the top of the Segaria mountain ridge opposite our house - but most has been lost in the mists of time.

We were surprised and pleased to find when reading one of our local guide books that, a mile or so up a track off an inland road that we know, there are some 8,000 year old cave paintings, which were discovered only in 1980.  The pictures at Pla de Petracos, recognised by UNESCO as a world heritage site, are some of the oldest and most important in Spain and give some clues to the lives of these Neolithic (later Stone Age) people for whom fertility and abundance, being the key to survival, were central to their values.  

These farming communities were the first to sow seeds, develop pottery and domesticate animals in this region and the cave paintings high up in the rock wall in sheltered places, rather like modern shrines, mean that this was almost certainly a religious place.  There are eight caves in a row, five of which still show images in red on the walls. The image in the cave shown below is of a bull's head and a woman which together are thought to represent fertility.  The other four images represent humans seemingly praying, arms outstretched, the family, hunting of a deer and the agricultural cycle. We went along to have a look and to marvel at being part of such a long chain of human development. Wonderful.

The paintings are clearly visible from the viewing platform

...but the zoom lens makes them clearer