🇪🇸 Spain · Rock art
Altamira Cave
Solutrean–Magdalenian ~18–14 ka BP · Solutrean/Magdalenian Cantabrian
Great Ceiling of polychrome bison — the Paleolithic Sistine Chapel at Santillana del Mar.
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The catalogue
11 places to sift through. Narrow by kind, country, period or how firmly each one is established — contested and pseudoarchaeological claims are labelled here, never hidden.
🇪🇸 Spain · Rock art
Solutrean–Magdalenian ~18–14 ka BP · Solutrean/Magdalenian Cantabrian
Great Ceiling of polychrome bison — the Paleolithic Sistine Chapel at Santillana del Mar.
🇪🇸 Spain · Rock art
Mousterian to Magdalenian ~150–11 ka BP · Neanderthal then Aurignacian to Magdalenian
Monte Castillo reference sequence cave with 40 ka red disks and 150 kyr stratigraphy.
🇪🇸 Spain · Rock art
Middle Paleolithic to Magdalenian ~64–11 ka BP · Neanderthal and later Solutrean/Magdalenian
Monte Castillo cave with 64 ka Neanderthal ladder motif and 700 parietal figures.
🇪🇸 Spain · Rock art
Gravettian to Magdalenian ~20–11 ka BP · Upper Paleolithic Iberian
2 km open-air schist engravings paired with Côa Valley, 443 Paleolithic pecked figures.
🇪🇸 Spain · Rock art
Upper Paleolithic (40,800 BCE Aurignacian to Magdalenian) · Aurignacian, Gravettian, Magdalenian (Homo sapiens & Neanderthal debate)
Cave of El Castillo (Monte Castillo, Puente Viesgo) – UNESCO Paleolithic Cave Art 1985: 40,800-year-old red ochre stencilled hand (U-Th oldest in Europe, possibly Neanderthal), bison, horses, cervids…
🇪🇸 Spain · Hydraulic works
Roman Augustan (late Republic to early Principate) · Roman Tarraconensis (Tarraco Colonia)
217-m Augustan double-tier arcade (20 BCE–20 CE) 27 m high — Tarraco's Francolí aqueduct masterpiece.
🇪🇸 Spain · Rock art
Upper Palaeolithic (Solutrean–Magdalenian) · Solutrean–Magdalenian hunter-gatherers of western Iberia
443 Palaeolithic figures on Águeda schist—UNESCO trans-frontier extension of Côa Valley (20–10k BCE).
🇪🇸 Spain · Rock art
Solutrean to Magdalenian ~18–11 ka BP · Magdalenian Cantabrian
Ribadesella polychrome Magdalenian cave sealed until 1968 with 14 ka harpoon culture art.
🇪🇸 Spain · Cave
Early to Middle Pleistocene · Acheulean / Homo antecessor
Key trench complex (Gran Dolina, Galería, Elefante) in Cueva Mayor-Cueva del Silo system, Sierra de Atapuerca, yielding Homo antecessor (850 ka, TD6), Homo heidelbergensis and earliest cannibalism…
🇪🇸 Spain · Hydraulic works
Roman Flavian Trajanic c.112 CE · Roman (Hispania)
Aqueduct of Segovia – 28.5m double-tier granite ashlar aqueduct (167 arches, 15 km total, 813m bridge) carrying Río Frío to Alcázar without mortar, c.112 CE Flavian-Trajanic. UNESCO 1985.
🇪🇸 Spain · Cave
Upper Palaeolithic (Magdalenian) · Magdalenian
Major Magdalenian cave on the Sella River with 12 galleries of polychrome paintings (c. 22,000–10,000 BP), including horses, reindeer and famous anthropomorph, plus habitation deposits.