Coliboaia Cave ( ro, Peștera Coliboaia, ) is located in
Apuseni Natural Park
The Apuseni Natural Park ( ro, Parcul Natural Apuseni) is a protected area ( natural park category V IUCN) situated in Romania, in the administrative territory of counties Alba, Bihor and Cluj.
Location
The Natural Park is located in western ...
,
Câmpani,
Bihor County
Bihor County () is a county (județ) in western Romania. With a total area of , Bihor is Romania's 6th largest county geographically and the main county in the historical region of Crișana. Its capital city is Oradea.
Toponymy
The origin of ...
,
Romania
Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...
. It may contain the oldest known
cave paintings
In archaeology, Cave paintings are a type of parietal art (which category also includes petroglyphs, or engravings), found on the wall or ceilings of caves. The term usually implies prehistoric origin, and the oldest known are more than 40,000 y ...
of
Central Europe
Central Europe is an area of Europe between Western Europe and Eastern Europe, based on a common historical, social and cultural identity. The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) between Catholicism and Protestantism significantly shaped the a ...
,
radiocarbon dated to 32,000 and 35,000 years BP,
corresponding to the
Aurignacian and
Gravettian
The Gravettian was an archaeological industry of the European Upper Paleolithic that succeeded the Aurignacian circa 33,000 years BP. It is archaeologically the last European culture many consider unified, and had mostly disappeared by ...
cultures of the
Paleolithic period.
Research history
The Coliboaia Cave was first mentioned in literature before 1900, but only in 1981 was it extensively investigated by
Gabor Halasi. The cave was not widely known until September 2009, when prehistoric mural cave paintings were discovered. It was quickly put under protection by the
Romanian Federation of Speleology
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
*** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
** Romanian cuisine, tradition ...
.
Location and access
Situated on a western slope of the
Sigheştel Valley, the cave sits at an altitude of . It has a medium-sized entrance and a portal that is oriented from east to west. To access the so-called Art Gallery, cave divers must pass a great chamber, natural lake, and main gallery. The Art Gallery itself is seven meters above ground.
Drawings
The drawings in the Art Gallery are representations of animals, done in black and likely with charcoal. Some of the animals depicted include
bison,
bears, and
rhinoceros
A rhinoceros (; ; ), commonly abbreviated to rhino, is a member of any of the five extant species (or numerous extinct species) of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. (It can also refer to a member of any of the extinct species ...
, while the subject of other drawings remains unknown. The images are on both walls of the cave and do not appear to have any type of symmetrical pattern.
On the right wall, there is a drawing of a bison. The picture is above the ground and executed in bluish-gray lines. On the left side, an illustration of a rhinoceros head is above the floor. A consistent element to these drawings is that they only represent the heads of animals.
Dating
The age of the pictures is being debated. Archaeologists’ estimates vary, but fall within the Middle Paleolithic, in between 35,000 and 23,000 BCE, which corresponds to the
Aurignacian culture (35,000 to 29,000 years ago) and the
Gravettian
The Gravettian was an archaeological industry of the European Upper Paleolithic that succeeded the Aurignacian circa 33,000 years BP. It is archaeologically the last European culture many consider unified, and had mostly disappeared by ...
culture (29,000 to 22,000 years ago). However, the fact that cave bears and rhinos were scarce during those two time periods, makes this dating controversial. Furthermore, the drawings do not appear to be completely uniform. This suggests they were not all done at the same time.
. A more recent paper makes a more accurate dating, using method
14C: 26,605 ÷ 36,324 cal. BP.
Gély, B. & al. (2018). Peştera Coliboaia (Campani, Bihor) grotte ornée aurignacienne de Roumanie : État d‘avancement des études pluridisciplinaires (2009-2014)
/ref>
See also
*Prehistoric Transylvania
The Prehistory of Transylvania describes what can be learned about the region known as Transylvania through archaeology, anthropology, comparative linguistics and other allied sciences.
Transylvania proper is a plateau or tableland in northwe ...
*Chauvet Cave
The Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave (french: Grotte Chauvet-Pont d'Arc, ) in the Ardèche department of southeastern France is a cave that contains some of the best-preserved figurative cave paintings in the world, as well as other evidence of Upper Pale ...
in southwestern France, where 35,000-year-old figures were drawn using a similar technique
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pestera Coliboaia
Caves of Romania
Geography of Bihor County
Archaeological sites in Romania