Oldest Cave Paintings may be 30,000 Years Old

[L Roebuck]

Spain's oldest cave paintings may be 30,000 years old: investigator

The paintings in Spain's Cantal caves date back to 30,000 years ago and are the oldest in Spain, researcher Pedro Cantalejo said yesterday at a press conference.

Cantalejo, who has spent 20 years in the Upper Paleolithic caves, in Andalucia municipality Rincon de la Victoria, said the hunter-gatherers who painted Cantal's more than 200 paintings, began work 30,000 to 20,000 years ago, older than the famous cave paintings of Altamira in northern Spain as well as those of Lascaux in southwest France.

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[Brian Roebuck]

It is hard to imagine prehistoric people 30,000 years ago creating art with much deeper meanings and concepts than simply drawing what they saw around them. Yet in these caves one can see just that. There is a theme to the cave art and the entire set of individual drawings, paintings, and etchings as a whole have meaning beyond just capturing an image as we might do with a photo today. I guess the "So Easy a Cave Man can do it" phrase isn't demeaning at all. Some of them were amazing artists showing both talent and deep thought in how images were presented.