Bison in Altamira Cave, Santillana de Mar, Spain
On Sept. 18, 2001, I published a piece in the Wall Street Journal (no online link) about my memorable visit to Spain’s prehistoric Altamira Cave. I then described the “intense spiritual charge of being surrounded by the creative aura of our inspired precursors, who, gazing at the bumps, cracks and curves of their abode’s inner surfaces, saw in them and brought to life the humps of bison, the curvature of heads, the outlines of bodies.”
I also saw firsthand “why visitors are bad for caves,” when our elderly guide’s flashlight cap came loose and clattered into the pit where prehistoric food had been prepared, whereupon one of the nimblest in our group scampered down (with the guide’s permission) to retrieve it, violating the rule to stay on the prescribed path and keep hands off the walls.
Little did I then know that I had managed to explore this cultural treasure just in time: When I perused its 14,500-year-old wall and ceiling paintings (including its famed bison), access was restricted to 8,500 visitors a year, down from 177,000 annually before 1977. Altamira had been closed for five years until 1982. In September 2002, about a year after my visit, it closed once again, because of concern about the deterioration of the paintings due to the effect of people’s breath and body heat on the cave’s climate.
But if you rue the lost opportunity to see the first discovered prehistoric cave in Europe, you may soon be in luck: Daniel Woolls of the Associated Press reports that visits “will resume next year, although on a still-unspecified, restricted
basis,” despite the fact that “in April of this year, the
government’s main scientific research body, called the CSIC, recommended
that the caves remain closed.”
From the sound of things, is seems that the decision of the site’s board to reopen the fabled cave was partly based on economics. Woolls quotes Miguel Angel Revilla, president of the Cantabria region, proclaiming:
Altamira is
an asset we cannot do without.
I presume this means that the replica cave and museum of prehistory that had opened nearby shortly before I arrived were no substitute, as a tourist magnet, for the real thing. I thought the new facility, while engaging and well executed, was no match for the frisson of the original.
But if adequate precautions are not taken to safeguard the condition of the paintings, Altamira will become an asset that everyone will have to “do without”—permanently. The balance between preservation and public access is difficult—maybe impossible—to resolve satisfactorily.
Agence France-Presse quotes Revilla saying that he has already composed an invitation to the person he hopes may be the First Tourist to the reopened Altamira Cave—President Obama.
Meanwhile, Lascaux in France, perhaps the most famous of the painted prehistoric caves (which I wrote about for the Wall Street Journal, after visiting its disappointing replica) remains closed to the public in the interests of preservation. I never did get to see the original, despite my best efforts at journalistic persuasion.