ABSTRACT
Located 2 km south of the village of Santillana del Mar (Santander), near the north coast of Spain, the cave of Altamira, nicknamed the Sistine Chapel of Cave Art, was decorated at various times between c. 16000 and 14000 years ago. First discovered by a hunter in 1868, it was visited in 1876 by a local landowner, Don Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, who noticed some black painted signs on a wall at the back, but thought little of them. In 1879 he returned to do some excavating and, while he was digging in the cave floor, searching for prehistoric tools and portable art of the kind he had recently seen displayed at a Paris exhibition, his 8-year-old daughter Maria was playing in the cavern. Suddenly she spotted the cluster of great polychrome bison paintings on the ceiling.
