Don Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola y Pedrueca or Marcelino de Sautuola was a Spanish jurist and amateur archaeologist who owned the land where the

Altamira Altamira may refer to: People *Altamira (surname) Places * Cave of Altamira, a cave in Cantabria, Spain famous for its paintings and carving *Altamira, Pará, a city in the Brazilian state of Pará * Altamira, Huila, a town and municipality in ...

cave was found.

Altamira cave

The Altamira cave, now famous for its unique collection of

prehistoric art In the history of art, prehistoric art is all art produced in preliterate, prehistorical cultures beginning somewhere in very late geological history, and generally continuing until that culture either develops writing or other methods of rec ...

, was well known to local people, but had not been given much attention until 1868, when it was "discovered" by the hunter Modesto Cubillas Pérez. Sautuola started exploring the caves in 1875. He did not become aware of the paintings until 1879, when his eight-year-old daughter María noticed that the ceiling was covered with images of bison. Sautuola, having seen similar images engraved on Paleolithic objects displayed at the World Exposition in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

the year before, rightly assumed that the paintings might also date from the Stone Age. He therefore engaged an archaeologist from the University of Madrid to help him in his further work.

Publication

Professor Juan Vilanova y Piera supported Sautuola's assumptions, and they published their results in 1880, to considerable public acclaim. In contrast, the scientific establishment of his day was reluctant to accept the presumed antiquity of the paintings. The French specialists, led by their guru

Gabriel de Mortillet Louis Laurent Gabriel de Mortillet (29 August 1821 – 25 September 1898), French archaeologist and anthropologist, was born at Meylan, Isère. Biography Mortillet was educated at the Jesuit college of Chambéry and at the Paris Conservat ...

, were particularly adamant in rejecting the hypothesis of Sautuola and Piera and their findings were loudly ridiculed at the 1880 Prehistorical Congress in Lisbon. Due to the supreme artistic quality, and the exceptional state of conservation of the paintings, Sautuola was even accused of forgery. A fellow countryman maintained that the paintings had been produced by a contemporary artist, on Sautuola's orders. María Sanz de Sautuola2

During the next 20 years, several other findings of prehistoric paintings made the Altamira-paintings more plausible, and mainstream scientists retracted their opposition to the Spaniards. In 1902, the respected French archaeologist

Émile Cartailhac Émile Cartailhac (15 February 1845 – 26 November 1921) was a French prehistorian, one of the founding fathers of the studies of the cave art. He is perhaps best remembered because of his involvement with the Altamira paintings. Cartailhac was ...

, who had been one of the leading critics, emphatically admitted his mistake in the article, "Mea culpa d'un sceptique", published in the journal ''L'Anthropologie''.

Legacy

Sautuola had died fourteen years before Cartailhac's apology, and did not live to enjoy the restitution of his honour or the later scientific confirmation of his premonitions. Modern dating techniques have since confirmed that the paintings of the Altamira cave were created over extended periods, ranging from 11,000 and 19,000 years ago. For the study of Paleolithic art, Sautuola's discoveries must now be considered pivotal.

Family

Sautuola's daughter later married into the Botín family of

Cantabria Cantabria (, also , , Cantabrian: ) is an autonomous community in northern Spain with Santander as its capital city. It is called a ''comunidad histórica'', a historic community, in its current Statute of Autonomy. It is bordered on the east ...

n bourgeoisie. The current owners of

Banco Santander Banco Santander, S.A., doing business as Santander Group (, , Spanish: ), is a Spanish multinational financial services company based in Madrid and Santander in Spain. Additionally, Santander maintains a presence in all global financial centr ...

are Sautuola's descendants.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sanz de Sautuola, Marcelino 1831 births 1888 deaths Amateur archaeologists People from Santander, Spain Scientists from Cantabria Spanish jurists 19th-century Spanish archaeologists