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Paleolithic Cave Art Of Northern Spain
The Cave of Altamira and Paleolithic Cave Art of Northern Spain () is a grouping of 18 caves of northern Spain, which together represent the apogee of Upper Paleolithic cave art in Europe between 35,000 and 11,000 years ago (Aurignacian, Gravettian, Solutrean, Magdalenian, Azilian). In 2008, they were collectively designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Chief among these caves is Altamira, located within the town of Santillana del Mar in Cantabria. It remains one of the most important painting cycles of prehistory, originating in the Magdalenian and Solutrean periods of the Upper Paleolithic. This cave's artistic style represents the Franco-cantabrian school, characterized by the realism of its figural representation. Altamira Cave was declared a World Heritage Site in 1985. In 2008, the World Heritage Site was expanded to include 17 additional caves located in three autonomous communities of northern Spain: Asturias, Cantabria and the Basque Country. List of caves Se ...
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Cave Of Altamira
The Cave of Altamira ( ; ) is a cave complex, located near the historic town of Santillana del Mar in Cantabria, Spain. It is renowned for prehistoric cave painting, cave art featuring charcoal drawings and polychrome paintings of contemporary local fauna and human hands. The earliest paintings were applied during the Upper Paleolithic, around 36,000 years ago. The site was discovered in 1868 by Modesto Cubillas and subsequently studied by Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola. Aside from the striking quality of its polychromatic art, Altamira's fame stems from the fact that its paintings were the first European cave paintings for which a prehistoric origin was suggested and promoted. Sautuola published his research with the support of Juan de Vilanova y Piera in 1880, to initial public acclaim. However, the publication of Sanz de Sautuola's research quickly led to a bitter public controversy among experts, some of whom rejected the prehistoric origin of the paintings on the grounds that ...
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Cave Art
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 art, prehistoric origin. These paintings were often created by ''Human, Homo sapiens'', but also Denisovan, Denisovans and Neanderthal, Neanderthals; other species in the same ''Homo'' genus. Discussion around prehistoric art is important in understanding the history of ''Homo sapiens'' and how human beings have come to have unique abstract thoughts. Some point to these prehistoric paintings as possible examples of creativity, spirituality, and sentimental thinking in prehistoric humans. The oldest known are more than 40,000 years old (art of the Upper Paleolithic) and found in the caves in the district of Maros (Sulawesi, Indonesia). The oldest are often constructed from hand stencils and simple geometric shapes.M. Aubert et al., "Pleistocene cave art from Sulawesi, Indonesia", ''Nature'' ...
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Basque Country (autonomous Community)
The Basque Country or Basque Autonomous Community (), also officially called Euskadi (), is an Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in northern Spain. It includes the Basque provinces of Álava, Araba, Biscay, Bizkaia, and Gipuzkoa. It surrounds two enclaves called Treviño enclave, Treviño (Province of Burgos, Burgos) and Valle de Villaverde (Cantabria). The Basque Country was granted the status of ''Nationalities and regions of Spain, nationality'', attributed by the Spanish Constitution of 1978. The autonomous community is based on the Statute of Autonomy of the Basque Country, a foundational legal document providing the framework for the development of the Basque people on Southern Basque Country. Parallelly, Navarre, which narrowly rejected a joint statute of autonomy in 1932, was granted a separate chartered statute in 1982. Currently there is no official capital in the autonomous community, but the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz, in the province of Álava, is ...
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Asturias
Asturias (; ; ) officially the Principality of Asturias, is an autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in northwest Spain. It is coextensive with the provinces of Spain, province of Asturias and contains some of the territory that was part of the larger Kingdom of Asturias in the Middle Ages. Divided into eight Comarcas of Asturias, ''comarcas'' (counties), the autonomous community of Asturias is bordered by Cantabria to the east, by Province of León, León (Castile and León) to the south, by Province of Lugo, Lugo (Galicia (Spain), Galicia) to the west, and by the Cantabrian Sea to the north. Asturias is situated in a mountainous setting with vast greenery and lush vegetation, making it part of Green Spain. The region has a oceanic climate, maritime climate. It receives plenty of annual rainfall and little sunshine by Spanish standards and has very moderate seasons, most often averaging in the lower 20s Celsius. Heat waves are rare due to mountains blocking s ...
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Autonomous Communities Of Spain
The autonomous communities () are the first-level political divisions of Spain, administrative divisions of Spain, created in accordance with the Constitution of Spain, Spanish Constitution of 1978, with the aim of guaranteeing limited autonomy to the nationalities and regions of Spain, nationalities and regions that make up Spain. There are 17 autonomous communities and two autonomous cities (Ceuta and Melilla) that are collectively known as "autonomies". The two autonomous cities have the right to become autonomous communities. The autonomous communities exercise their right to self-government within the limits set forth in the constitution and Organic Law (Spain), organic laws known as Statute of Autonomy, Statutes of Autonomy, which broadly define the powers that they assume. Each statute sets out the devolved powers () for each community; typically those communities with stronger local nationalism have more powers, and this type of devolution has been called ''asymmetric ...
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Prehistory
Prehistory, also called pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins   million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of symbols, marks, and images appears very early among humans, but the earliest known writing systems appeared years ago. It took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted, with writing having spread to almost all cultures by the 19th century. The end of prehistory therefore came at different times in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently. It is based on an old conception of history that without written records there could be no history. The most common conception today is that history is based on evidence, however the concept of prehistory hasn't been completely discarded. In the early Bronze Age, Sumer in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley Civil ...
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Cantabria
Cantabria (, ; ) is an autonomous community and Provinces of Spain, province in northern Spain with Santander, Cantabria, Santander as its capital city. It is called a , a Nationalities and regions of Spain, historic community, in its current Statute of Autonomy. It is bordered on the east by the Basque Country (autonomous community), Basque autonomous community (Biscay, province of Biscay), on the south by Castile and León (Province of León, provinces of León, Palencia (province), Palencia and Province of Burgos, Burgos), on the west by the Asturias, Principality of Asturias, and on the north by the Cantabrian Sea, which forms part of the Bay of Biscay. Cantabria belongs to ''Green Spain'', the name given to the strip of land between the Bay of Biscay and the Cantabrian Mountains, so called because of its particularly lush vegetation, due to the wet and temperate oceanic climate. The climate is strongly influenced by Atlantic Ocean winds trapped by the mountains; the averag ...
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Santillana Del Mar
Santillana del Mar () is a historic town situated in Cantabria, Spain. Its many historic buildings attract thousands of visitors every year. There is an old saying that Santillana del Mar is ''The Town of Three Lies'', since it is neither a Saint (''Santo''), nor flat (''llana''), nor is it by the sea (''Mar'') as implied by its name. However, the name actually derives from Santa Juliana (or Santa Illana) whose remains are kept in the Colegiata, a Romanesque church and former Benedictine monastery. The UNESCO World Heritage Site Cave of Altamira is nearby. Localities The 3,983 inhabitants ( INE, 2006) are distributed as follows: * Arroyo, 43 pop. * Camplengo, 201 pop. * Herrán, 204 pop. * Mijares, 124 pop. * Queveda, 586 pop. * Santillana del Mar (capital), 1.108 pop. * Ubiarco, 246 pop. * Vispieres, 337 hab. * Viveda, 1.069 pop. * Yuso, 65 pop. Utilities Wi-Fi hotspot The municipality of Santillana del Mar has launched the creation of free internet access in the villag ...
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UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International security, security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It has 194 Member states of UNESCO, member states and 12 associate members, as well as partners in the Non-governmental organization, non-governmental, Intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental and private sector. Headquartered in Paris, France, UNESCO has 53 regional field offices and 199 National Commissions for UNESCO, national commissions. UNESCO was founded in 1945 as the successor to the League of Nations' International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation.English summary). UNESCO's founding mission, which was shaped by the events of World War II, is to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights by facilitating collaboratio ...
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World Heritage Site
World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an treaty, international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity". To be selected, a World Heritage Site is nominated by its host country and determined by the UNESCO's World Heritage Committee to be a unique landmark which is geographically and historically identifiable, having a special cultural or physical significance, and to be under a sufficient system of legal protection. World Heritage Sites might be ancient ruins or historical structures, buildings, cities, deserts, forests, islands, lakes, monuments, mountains or wilderness areas, and others. A World Heritage Site may signify a remarkable accomplishment of humankind and serve as evidence of humanity's intellectual history on the planet, or it might be a place of grea ...
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Azilian
The Azilian is a Mesolithic archaeological industry, industry of the Franco-Cantabrian region of northern Spain and Southern France. It dates approximately 10,000–12,500 years ago. Diagnostic Cultural artifact, artifacts from the culture include projectile points (microliths with rounded retouched backs), crude flat bone harpoons and pebbles with abstract decoration. The latter were first found in the River Arize at the type-site for the culture, the ''Mas d'Azil cave, Grotte du Mas d'Azil'' at Le Mas-d'Azil in the French Pyrenees (illustrated, now with a modern road running through it). These are the main type of Azilian art, showing a great reduction in scale and complexity from the Magdalenian Art of the Upper Palaeolithic. The industry can be classified as part of the Epipaleolithic or the Mesolithic periods, or of both. Archaeologists think the Azilian represents the tail end of the Magdalenian as the warming climate brought about changes in human behaviour in the area. The ...
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Magdalenian
Magdalenian cultures (also Madelenian; ) are later cultures of the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic in western Europe. They date from around 17,000 to 12,000 years before present. It is named after the type site of Abri de la Madeleine, a rock shelter () located in the Vézère valley of Tursac in Dordogne, France. Édouard Lartet and Henry Christy originally termed the period ''L'âge du renne'' "the age of the reindeer". They conducted the first archaeological excavation of the type site, publishing in 1875. The Magdalenian is associated with reindeer hunters. Magdalenian sites contain extensive evidence for the hunting of red deer, wild horses, and other megafauna present in Europe toward the end of the Last Glacial Period. The culture was geographically widespread, and later Magdalenian sites stretched from Portugal in the west to Poland in the east, and as far north as France, the Channel Islands, England, and Wales. Besides la Madeleine, the chief stations of the Ma ...
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