It was dusk when we reached the cave, a gaping hole in a hillside in the Basque country of northern Spain. I had hoped to visit the famous Altamira caves nearby but did not receive permission from the Spanish government in time before arriving there in summer 1993. Just by chance, I noticed another cave site on the map after visiting the ancient Basque capital of Guernica, made famous by Picasso’s powerful painting of the Fascist attack on the town in 1937.
We may have left the cave as a dwelling place millennia ago, but some determined brewers are now going back underground in search of better beer.
We were running late, as usual, and when we reached the cave, the gate in front was closed. Several people lingered there. Suddenly, one of them announced that since there were enough of us now, we might as well go in. Our surprise guide opened the iron bars and led us on a fascinating journey more than 1 kilometer into the Earth, complete with a view of a few ancient paintings of prehistoric animals in one hidden recess of the cave. It was a giant step backward in time that made our entire trip worthwhile.
Caves may be in the news these days as hideouts for terrorists, but our efforts to search them out are nothing new. Caves have lured us into their depths for centuries. Natural caverns throughout the world have revealed not only the wonders of mysterious rock formations and passageways that lie beneath Earth’s surface, but also the earliest vestiges of human history. In them have been found the archeological residue of bones and skull fragments of our prehistoric ancestors, as well as the first records of human-made marks on the planet. In the caverns of Lascaux in France, Altamira in Spain, and dozens of other sites throughout the world, paintings depicting men and beasts dance across the rock surfaces of caverns that once functioned as humanity’s shelters, storehouses, and even cathedrals.
Deep in our distant past, caves provided a home for human hunter-gatherers, allowing them to escape the ravages of wet and stormy weather, as well as animal predators and other enemies. Here man made his fires, fashioned his weapons, and kept his food.
When our forebears learned to grow crops and build huts, caves still kept their useful function as ideal places in which to store food, where cool temperatures year round helped preserve it.
