Cueva de La Pasiega, or Cave of La Pasiega, situated in the Spanish municipality of Puente Viesgo, is one of the most important monuments of Paleolithic art in Cantabria. It is included in the UNESCO World Heritage List since July 2008, as part of the inscription: Cave of Altamira and Paleolithic Cave Art of Northern Spain.Lamalfa, Carlos and Peñil, Javier, 'Las cuevas de Puente Viesgo', in Cuevas de España (Editorial Everest, León, 1991).
The cave is located in the heart of the uniprovincial community, in the middle of the Pas River valley, around the cave of Hornos de la Pena and Monte Castillo, in the same group of caves as Las Monedas, Las Chimeneas, and the cave of El Castillo. The caves of Monte Castillo form an amazingly complete series, both as regards the material culture of the Old Stone Age and from an artistic point of view. La Pasiega is basically an enormous gallery, its known extent more than 120 meters, that runs more or less parallel to the slope of the mount, opening to the surface at six different places: six small mouths, the majority obstructed, of which two can be accessed for inspection. The principal gallery is approximately 70 meters and opens to deeper secondary galleries, winding and labyrinthine, which in places broaden out to form large chambers. Thus one refers to "room II-VIII", the room called "Gallery B", or "room 11" of "Gallery C", all with Paleolithic decorations.
The recorded remains belong mainly to the Upper Solutrean and the Lower Magdalenian ages, although older objects are also found. In 2018 uranium-thorium dating claimed to reveal a scalariform (ladder shaped) symbol to be older than 64,000 years and therefore imply it was made by Neanderthals rather than modern humans. This dating, and the possibility of Neanderthal cave art, is disputed on the physical-chemical evidence.Sauvet G. Uranium-thorium dating: the race towards the earliest rock art. AOJ Hist Archaeol Anthropol Explor. 2026;2(1):13–15.
Throughout the cave are many 'walls' with paintings and with engraved or incised images. There are representations of equines (horses), cervids (deer, male and female) and bovines (cattle). There are also many abstract symbols (idiomorphs), suggesting patterns of repeated characters.
Discovery The scientific discovery of the La Pasiega can be credited to Werner and Hugo Obermaier. While excavating the Cave of El Castillo in 1911, they received news that the workers knew of another cavity nearby, which villagers called "La Pasiega." The investigators soon confirmed that the cave contained rock paintings. Later, Henri Breuil, Hugo Obermaier, and Hermilio Alcalde del Río began their systematic study of the cave. However, the study could not be finished due to Henri Breuil's ongoing work on his magnum opus.Breuil, H., Alcalde del Río, H., and Sierra, L., Les Cavernes de la Région Cantabrique (Espagne), Ed. A. Chêne. (Monaco 1911). A separate monograph was necessary, and was published in 1913.Breuil, H., Obermaier, H., and Alcalde del Río, H., La Pasiega à Puente Viesgo, Ed. A. Chêne (Mónaco, 1913)Both publications were issued in Monaco because it was Prince Alberto I of Monaco who was patron of the investigations, ever since he had visited the site in 1909. He was a great lover of archaeology, supported this excavation and others greatly, and one of the fossil humans is named in his honour "Grimaldi Man", one of many names given to Homo sapiens fossilis). The study was crucial to advance prehistoric science in Spain. "In the next decade, Alcalde del Río was to assist fully in the international project that the Institut de paléontologie humaine in París sponsored, in which Abbé Breuil and H. Obermaier were prominent. That is the period in which the cave of La Pasiega was discovered. This is the most important moment in the study of Cantabrian rock art. The fruits of this labour were to feature in the monumental joint publications on the caves of the region, issued in Monaco, in the general work (Alcalde del Río, Breuil and Sierra, 1911), and specifically on La Pasiega (Breuil, Obermaier and Alcalde del Río, 1913)" — Joaquín González EchegarayGonzález Echegaray, Joaquín (1994): 'Consideraciones preliminares sobre el arte rupestre cantábrico', in Complutum, Vol. 5, New Series of publications of the Complutense University of Madrid, pp 15-19. ISSN 1131-6993.
In 1903 Alcalde del Río had discovered the cave El Castillo, and, as noted, Obermaier carried out excavations between 1910 and 1914. The excavations were continued at various times, intermittently, until our own times, by qualified specialists.Cabrera, V., Bernaldo de Quirós F. et al. (2004), 'Excavaciones en El Castillo: Veinte años de reflexiones', in Neandertales cantábricos, estado de la cuestión, vol. Actas de la Reunión Científica, Nº 20-22 (October) (Museo de Altamira, Ministerio de Cultura 2004). Ultimately the investigation was taken up by the archaeologists Rodrigo de Balbín Behrmann and César González Sainz. After the discovery of "La Pasiega" and the first campaigns, the area was little visited — mainly owing to the difficult historical circumstances of Spain in the 1930s. After this, in 1952, while a eucalyptus plantation was being put in, another cave was found with a small monetary treasure of the 17th century: hence the new cave was called "Las Monedas": in it, however, was found a rock sanctuary with important pictures and drawings. In light of this, the engineer Alfredo García Lorenzo concluded that Monte Castillo held more secrets. Therefore, a geological survey was set in motion which resulted the following year in the discovery of another cave with rock paintings, "Las Chimeneas" ("The Chimneys"), and also other covachas of lesser importance such as "La Flecha", "Castañera", "Lago" etc.
Other archaeologists The cave, because it had remains of the primary Cantabrian Solutrean and Magdalenian epochs, provided the basis for a chronological series for the 'wall' paintings. The excavations were old, most recently conducted by Dr. Jesus Carballo in 1951. There was a base level with ambiguous artefacts which, by their characteristics, seemed related to a possible Mousterian phase. Above that there rested a comparatively rich Solutrean level with very characteristic implements such as 'feuilles de laurier' (leaf-points) and notched points with the finest working produced by light pressure-flaking, like light javelin points. This level could be attributed accurately to the Upper Solutrean. The most recent layer was also relatively rich, with various burins (borers), striker pins, and perforated objects of bone and that could belong to the Lower Magdalenian. Certainly, compared with the stratigraphical significance of El Castillo, La Pasiega is an archeological sequence of less organization, so far as the materials yet found are concerned.This evaluation carries the caveat that it depends on the archaic system of excavation which existed in Spain in the 1950s and before. In fact it is a notorious and proven fact that in the spoil-heaps of those old works carried out at Monte Castillo, one can find discarded specimens which are really objects of archaeological importance. However they should certainly not be less valued for this.
Cave paintings On the plan proposed by André Leroi-Gourhan, La Pasiega can be taken as a good example of the "Cave as Sanctuary", or to be more precise as a collection of sanctuaries of different epochs, arranged according to certain models. In fact this idea developed in the thoughts of the distinguished French prehistorian precisely when he visited the Cantabrian caves, while he was participating in a group of foreign investigators who were excavating in the cave of El Pendo during the 1950s. "I can definitely confirm that the study of the rock art of northern Spain was decisive in the master's ideas, which since then have become famous through his many publications."Gonzalez Echegaray 1994, 'Consideraciones preliminares sobre el arte rupestre cantábrico', in Complutum, Vol. 5, New Series of publications of the Complutense University of Madrid. For Leroi-Gourhan, this type of cave has a rather complex spatial or topographical hierarchy in which it is possible to discern principal groups of animals (bos facing equus, forming a duality), which occupy the most conspicuous or preferred areas, complemented by secondary animals (deer, goat, etc.) and other more occasional species which however fulfil their subsidiary function: on the other hand it is usual that the idiomorphic symbols appear in peripheral or marginal areas, or in those which are difficult to reach:Leroi-Gourhan, André, 'Consideraciones sobre la organización espacial de las figuras animales en el arte parietal paleolítico', in Símbolos, Artes y Creencias de la Prehistoria (Editorial Istmo, Madrid 1984). Animals and symbols correspond, therefore, to the same basic formulae, logically binary and even defended by the fact that animals of the same species appear frequently in pairs, male and female, though the dispositivo is so complex that we ought not suppose an explanation purely based in the symbolism of fertility; the first element is the presence of two species A-B (horse-bison); confronted with two types of signs, masculine and feminine, an attempt to attribute to the horse and bison the same symbolic value or, at least, a bivalency of the same kind as that of the symbols of the two categories (S1 and S2)Leroi-Gourhan, André, 'Los hombres prehistóricos y la Religión', in Símbolos, Artes y Creencias de la Prehistoria (Editorial Istmo, Madrid 1984).
It is supposed that there are exceptions to this rule, many variants which depend on regions and epochs, the significance of which is not entirely clear in its general outline, but which should be explained in a particular way, also at La Pasiega.
Joaquín González EchegarayGonzález Echegaray, Joaquín, 'Cuevas con arte rupestre en la región Cantábrica,' in Curso de Arte rupestre paelolítico (Publicaciones de la UIMP, Santander-Zaragoza, 1978), pp 49-78. and later his fellow-workersGonzález Echegaray, Joaquín and González Sainz, César (1994), 'Conjuntos rupestres paleolíticos de la Cornisa Cantábrica', in Complutum, vol. 5, Nº Servicio de publicaciones de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, pp 21-43. ISSN 1131-6993. have made various counts of the species of animal represented, one of which reckoned more than 700 painted forms in this cave, among others: 97 deer (69 females and 28 males), 80 horses, 32 ibex, 31 cattle (17 bison and 14 aurochs), two reindeer, a carnivorous animal, a chamois, a megaloceros, a bird and a fish; also there may be a mammoth and about 40 quadrupeds not clearly identified; also the idiomorphs, such as roof-shaped and other surprisingly varied symbols (more than 130), and very often including various anthropomorphs and hundreds of marks and partly erased traces.
Gallery A, 1st Sanctuary
To get into Gallery A it is necessary to descend by a little well, but originally one could go in by another entrance which, however, is now thoroughly blocked by stalactites and by collapses from outside. The gallery runs to a depth of 95 meters (from the present entrance), but it gets narrower and it is not possible to know whether it continues beyond. Entering into the cave, one passes a blocked entrance on the right, and between 60 and 70 meters depth appears the connection to Gallery B, slightly before the most interesting collection of pictures.
Then at a bit more than 75 meters it seems that the sanctuary (properly so-called) begins, with more than 50 deer (the majority female), the horses about half that number, and the cattle (aurochs and bison) fewer, strategically placed dominating the most visible places. In this sanctuary there have been found an anthropomorph, a vulva, linear and dotted symbols, a square and a great quantity of tectiforms, about as many as the deer.