Glacial rock art: 280 Palaeolithic engravings discovered in Catalonia

A cave visited for centuries without being recognised

The Cova de la Font Major has been frequented since the 12th century, making it a site of long-standing passage. From 1957 it attracted visitors, cavers and treasure hunters, before being developed as a tourist site in 1993.

Despite this long history of visits, no trace of glacial art had been noted there. It was even thought that the cave walls were unsuitable for Palaeolithic engraving, which explains why the motifs remained unseen for decades. Some visitors carved their names and a date directly onto the surfaces where the ancient figures lay, without suspecting their origin.

A geographical imbalance in Iberian rock art

The Iberian Peninsula holds more than half of the rock art documented in Upper Palaeolithic Europe. This wealth is, however, very unevenly distributed: the Franco-Cantabrian region, straddling France and Spain, accounts for the largest share, whereas Catalonia had only two known representations.

According to Josep Maria Vergès, of the Catalan Institute of Human Palaeoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES-CERCA), Palaeolithic art identified in north-eastern Iberia remained very rare compared with the abundance of the Franco-Cantabrian neighbour. The discovery at the Cova de la Font Major clearly changes this picture and opens a new chapter in regional research.

A discovery made in plain sight

The researchers recorded 280 Palaeolithic motifs, the highest concentration of cave wall representations known to date in Catalonia. For more than sixty years, thousands of visitors walked past these engraved surfaces without recognising their glacial origin, a point Vergès underlines by noting that their age had never been identified.

This number is exceptional when the area is compared with the Mediterranean coast of Iberia, where nearly 75% of known assemblages contain no more than five zoomorphic figures and over 90% no more than twenty. According to Míriam Salas-Altès, also of IPHES-CERCA, the richness of this site is therefore particularly remarkable.

An artistic tradition specific to the Mediterranean

Analysis of the motifs shows that they differ from those of the Franco-Cantabrian region. The authors conclude that this represents a distinct Palaeolithic artistic tradition, rather than a simple extension of the art of northern Spain or southern France.

This observation also suggests that north-eastern Iberia, long regarded as a marginal zone, may have been densely occupied during the Palaeolithic. For the researchers, this changes the understanding of the period in the western Mediterranean basin, where cave art had so far been known mainly through more modest assemblages.

What the discovery changes for research

The authors stress that the region had never yielded such clear evidence of an art of its own, which calls for a re-examination of other walls and caves along the Mediterranean coast. More detailed recording, using imaging methods, could refine the inventory of motifs and their relative chronology.

For the public, the decorated caves of the region remain accessible through museums and visitor sites, where Iberian glacial art can be compared with that of the Franco-Cantabrian arc and the diversity of traditions in this period can be better appreciated.