John Mcewen comments on Steppe Bison

LOOK Papa! Oxen!’ exclaimed the daughter of Spanish landowner and amateur archaeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola one day in 1879. In a newly revealed mountain cave, she saw extinct steppe bison painted using charcoal, ground ochre and hematite to create colours from pale yellow to red. The cave proved to be two-thirds of a mile long, its main passage between 6½ft and 19½ft high. Human occupation was limited to its mouth, but not the paintings. They had been done from 35,000bc until a rock fall sealed the entrance in 11,000bc.

Sautuola and an archaeologist, Juan Vilanova y Piera, published a scientific paper claiming they were Palaeolithic, or prehistoric in layman’s terms. Lack of smoke traces made rival archaeologists say they were forgeries, but Sautuola and Piera proved that burnt marrow fat produced little soot compared with wood.

It took 20 years for their claim to be accepted, since when 200 other caves in northern Spain containing Palaeolithic wall paintings have been discovered, although none as spectacular as Altamira. Today, the public is excluded for fear of breath contamination. There are replicas of a section at the site and in the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid.

Pigmented hand prints have proved a particularly popular aspect of the Altamira paintings for modern artists. In 1949, an artists’ group, among them Joan Miró (1893–1983) and the Englishman Tony Stubbing (1921– 83), formed the School of Altamira, which held discussions in the cave. Stubbing made his name with handprint paintings, one of which provided the final illustration in Herbert Read’s A Concise History of Modern Painting (1959). Read wrote that the Altamira cave paintings ‘still convey a magical effect’.