The doubts that were left in the air when in April the team of researchers investigating the El Cantal caves on the eastern Costa del Sol of Malaga province spoke of the enigmatic discovery of "the oldest human handprints in the Mediterranean" have been cleared up, thanks to the tireless work of the team, led by Pedro Cantalejo.
What has been discovered is proof of the existence of "the first systematised graphic language of the last Neanderthals and the first Homos Sapiens". In other words, it is a confirmation that, in their incursions into the caves, which helped them get to know them in depth, they left "informative markers in the form of codes or signage" that would guide explorers.
The research team relies on work carried out over the past ten months, during which they examined 144 walls that had been used as graphic spaces. The analyses show consistency with the earliest artistic phases documented in the Ardales Cave and the Cueva de las Suertes in Antequera.
The repetition of these graphic clues in other European caves is put into perspective by international teams within the First Art project, with which the Malaga group is collaborating, together with the team at the Cueva de Nerja research institute, the University of Cadiz and the PAI-1130 research group, which has its base of operations in the Strait of Gibraltar. This task is possible thanks to an extension of the Rincón caves project until the summer of 2026, when the research will culminate with the data provided by the next archaeological surveys.
According to Cantalejo, "for more than 40 thousand years, these people would make speleological incursions into the dark depths of these enormous caves, in very compromised conditions of safety and accessibility, helped by torches and fundamentally by hand lamps charged with organic fuel (fats, resins, beeswax and vegetables)".
Despite such precarious means, they carried out at least a dozen explorations and, in all of them, they left their marks and traces. To do this, they used red pigment based on iron oxide, with clay from the cavity itself, obtained by decalcifying the 'terra rossa' limestone rocks (reddish/brown), and with charcoal (black strokes).
To this colour palette were added designs made directly by finger-printing against the softer walls of various cavity spaces, in the manner of direct engravings.
"All this symbolism, once created, accumulated on the walls and was observable as signs in successive incursions," the team explains. The next generations to enter these spaces also added graphic motifs, although they already possessed other models and ways of expression, as they introduced representations of the Palaeolithic fauna of this territory into their paintings.
This first aniconic code, i.e. without naturalistic representations, is repeated with the same gestures on dozens of walls and despite its simplicity - dots, bars, stains, curved strokes and hands - it hints at a complex language, given the multitude of variations that are grouped together on each panel (wall with paintings or engravings).
Aware of the significance of this research campaign, Rincón de la Victoria mayor Francisco Salado has promised to keep investing "not only in the conservation and enhancement of caves, but also in research".
"Our relationship is close and we have been supporting their work. We have been taking care of all the branches on which the global project of the caves of Rincón de la Victoria is based: tourism, informative, cultural and scientific," said councillor for caves Antonio José Martín.
The obtaining of exact dates, by means of two dating methods - Carbon-14 for the organic remains and Uranium/Thorium for the calcium carbonate crusts and coatings - makes it possible to clarify the different actions carried out in these caves by humans, both in terms of their use as a shelter (the sites are located under the entrance wells to the caves, near the light), as well as in the use of four deep galleries (totally dark) as places where they made what has been called until now 'Palaeolithic cave art'.
"In the last ten months, studies have been carried out on 144 walls that were used as graphic spaces (62 walls had already been studied and published in 2007); a study protocol and the application of new technologies have been applied to all of them, which have not only increased the number of actions carried out by the Palaeolithic painters, but have also led to a notable improvement in the resolution of the graphic motifs preserved," Cantalejo said.
This new approach is possible thanks to computer applications specialised in the photography of rock art, which makes it possible to reveal the intensity of the traces made thousands of years ago, no matter how much they are absorbed by the supporting walls.