A HANDSHAKE FROM ANCIENT HISTORY

Some of the earliest cave paintings in the world were made on the walls of the Cave of El Castillo in Cantabria, Spain, around 37,000BC. They were created using red ochre, a natural pigment found in earth, applied not with a brush or stick, but by swilling the pigment in the mouth with saliva, then blowing or spitting it out.

These ancient Europeans made circles and dot patterns – and then stencilled their own hands (right) as if to tell someone they were there. ‘In an instant, vast millennia of time just collapse,’ says Simon Schama. ‘You’re in the midst of fellow humans, their hands doing what hands do. They’re signalling from a very long way off – 39,000 years ago – but this long- distance greeting somehow makes us bond with them.’ Similar hand stencils have been found in caves as far apart as Indonesia and Patagonia.

Just as remarkable is this detailed image of a bison (left), discovered in the 19th century in the subterranean Altamira cave complex in the same area. Known as ‘the Sistine Chapel of paleolithic art’, it contains extraordinary paintings of herds of bison in red, black and violet. The earliest art is usually found in small spaces, but later paintings seem to be in grander caverns where people could gather together. Prehistoric musical instruments such as animal horns have been found in many large painted caves, suggesting they were used for sacred rituals.