2023-04-25 11:33:17
For more than 40,000 years, human beings have passed through the nerja cave, some fewer being the object of scientific study, or exploited as a tourist attraction. During this time and still today, the place continues to surprise visitors and researchers from different parts of the world.
The latest find of the Malaga grotto has just been published in Scientific Report of Nature by an international team of scientists, including Marian Medinawho works at the University of Córdoba (currently at the University of Bordeaux), as well as eva rodriguez y Jose Luis Sanchidriánprofessor of Prehistory and scientific director of the Cueva de Nerja.
This work has managed to document 35,000 years of visits in 73 different phases
They have managed to demonstrate that humanity has been walking around Nerja for 41,000 years, 10,000 years earlier than previously believed. In addition, in their dissemination note, they want to record that it is the cave with Paleolithic art in Europe with the highest number of recurring visits to its interior during Prehistory.
Specifically, this new work has managed to document 35,000 years of visits in 73 different phases, which, they calculate, means that some human groups entered the cave every approximately 35 years. Such a level of detail of knowledge is possible thanks to the management of the latest techniques of dating of the coals and remains of fossilized smoke in the stalagmites from the Nerja cave.
It is what is called ‘smoke archaeology’ and consists of a new technique that has been developed Medinalead author of the study, who has spent more than a decade reconstructing European prehistory, by tracking traces of torches, bonfires and smoke in Spanish and French caves.
In this regard, the author especially highlights the information that transmission electron microscopy and carbon-14 dating techniques can provide about human rituals and ways of life.
The symbolic use of fire
The study presents 68 dates, 48 unpublished, of the deep areas of the cave and that contain Paleolithic art. Likewise, the location of evidence of chronocultures not recorded so far in the cavity is detailed.
‘Smoke archaeology’ designates this trace of traces of torches, bonfires and traces of fossilized smoke in stalagmites
These archaeologists interpret, based on the information obtained through the microscope, the way in which the torches could have moved, inferring from this the symbolic and scenic use that humans of 40,000 years ago could have given to fire.
“Prehistoric paintings were viewed with the flickering light of the llamas, which could give the figures a certain sense of movement and warmth,” Medina explains. Finally, he also underlines the funerary use of the Nerja cave in the last stage of prehistory, for thousands of years, and insists that “there is still much to be revealed about how we were.”
Reference:
Medina-Alcaide, M.A. et al. “35,000 years of recurrent visits inside Nerja cave (Andalusia, Spain) based on charcoals and soot micro-layers analyses”. Scientific Reports (2023)
Rights: Creative Commons.
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