Large Shelter is located at Minateda, a district located south of Hellin, in the Sierra de Flathead, taking advantage of a rocky area product of natural erosion of rock called biocalcarenite and in a natural environment of great geological beauty. It is also known as the Cave of Figures, because in it we can see more than six hundred scenes and motifs grouped individually, both animals and anthropomorphic figures. In the first case we are faced naturalists and very easy to identify figurative figures, as they can be horses, bulls, goats and deer. For humans, scenes of hunting and war are distinguished, attended by archers or scenes from daily life besides figures isolated, both naturalistic style, with great detail, as schematic, where the figures are solved with simple lines. For the realization of the paints were used natural pigments like iron oxide and instruments like pens, branches and one's fingers.

This great coats fue discovered in May 1914 by Juan Jimenez LLamas, one Almeria working in the service of Frederick and Motorcycle Henri Bueil. The second is one of the most important rock art researchers in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. Breuil arrive in April 1915 Minateda and begins to work doing the rubbings that serve as the basis for his work in editing 1920. About this work various evolutionary and chronological phases that were central to the investigation of this type of art are set.

Later, over time it is visited by several specialists until our days. Each performs partial revisions correcting the interpretation of various figures and establishing different time models have attracted controversy: on the one hand, those who argue that are Epipaleolithic period and, secondly, those who regard their start in the Neolithic.

What is clear is that the authors of these paintings were groups of human beings in the recent prehistory of culturally should be between the hunter-gatherer societies and farmers groups to reach the Bronze Age.

Finally, as to the meaning of these paintings, is difficult to know exactly the message you wanted to convey, but it is, definitely, code representative of a complex of great beauty and mystery that escapes us, evolving along their own time.

Of interest

Newly restored, Minateda cave paintings were declared World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1998.
All must make an effort for conservation and preservation in order to bequeath to future generations.

Cave paintings of Minateda

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