We climb up the gravel mountain road. I had always thought of caves as low and deep in the earth, but this one sticks out on the side of the mountain, and we have to walk up a good piece to reach it. From a vantage point, we can see clear to the Mediterranean Sea. Our guide reminds us that 20,000 years ago, when the first humans found and made use of this cave, the shoreline was some 20 kilometers further back, and that there was only low shrubbery, not tall trees. So there was a clear view of the valley -- and the traveling herds of animals they ate.
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| Photo credit: Carol Buck. 17 December 2022 |
In this cave, Cova Parpalló, over 5,000 painted and etched rocks have been found. Animals were drawn on flat rock pieces separated from the cave walls, like tiles, and found in different parts of the cave. Carvings directly in the cave walls remain to this day. Our guide tells us that inside the cave, they also found animal bones: rabbit bones were the most common, but also boars, deer and a prehistoric type of ox. Curiously, the paintings on stone found in the cave never represented rabbits, while the ox was painted over and over again. Our guide explains the hypothesis: the drawings were amulets, good luck charms, prayers and wishes put into drawing to bring that animal to the hunter. Imagine the celebration of bringing home hundreds of kilos of beef versus a few boney rabbits. If this hypothesis is true, it shows these ancestors had capacity for abstract thought and spirituality.
We imagine the landscape during the period that this cave was inhabited. The flora and fauna, the cold climate, the rocky terrain. Our guide tells us that while the Paleolithic art is remarkable (Cova Parpalló is the site of the most abundant Paleolithic art found to date in Europe), the most important aspect of the cave is the fact that the remains found represent continuous human presence in the cave from around 23,000 BCE for 10,000 years: and the sediment is layered in about 100 year increments, making this a valuable research site for archaeologists.
We are blown away. Who knew this incredible treasure was nestled in the mountains outside of a small coastal town of Valencia? None of us had ever heard of it before, and while the municipality promotes tours such as this one, it does not pop up on your usual tourist itinerary.
We turn now from the valley and sea to look up at the cave, sticking out of the side of the mountain. Our guide explains that there is something else special about this cave, and its shape is one clue. What does it look like to you?
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| Photo credit: Carol Buck. 17 December 2022. |
In those times, people lived in small groups of around 20-50 people, but they knew reproducing among themselves would lead to their genetic weakness and demise. So they found ways to have genetic contact with other groups. And Cova Parpalló was one of these sites of genetic contact, as well as cultural and material exchange.
Sea shells were found inside the cave. Another clue of exchange, since the resident group in this cave would not have reached the sea themselves.
But it is the astronomical position of the cave that most captures my interest.
On the spring equinox, our guide tells us, the sun enters the cave in such a way that two arrows are formed on the cave floor pointing to the back cavern. Studies have shown that sunlight reaches all the way to the deepest cavity of the cave only at spring and fall equinox.
The cave opening is facing south, meaning that all year, sunlight entered the cave. This was one reason it was a permanent dwelling place for people: it would have been warm especially through the winter months. Indeed: around the winter solstice, the sunrise aligns with the cave opening and bathes the back walls of the cave in light.
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In prehistoric times, caves represented the Mother Goddess, the womb and the source of life. No goddess images were found in Cova Parpalló -- perhaps because the cave itself was the goddess?
As Baring and Cashford write in The Myth of the Goddess (1991), "For at least 20,000 years (from 30,000 to 10,000 BC) the Paleolithic cave seems to be the most sacred place, the santuary of the Goddess and the source of her regenerative power. Entering one of these caves is like making a journey into another world, one which is inside the body of the goddess. To those who would have lived in a sacred world, the actual hollowed shape would have symbolized her all-containing womb, which brought forth the living and took back the dead." (p. 16)
Visiting just days before the winter solstice, though several hours
after sunrise, I experienced this light for myself from the back of the
cave. Standing just in front of the very last cavity, and looking out
the cave's opening, the illumination of the sun highlighted once again
the "female architecture" of the orifice and looking around, the shadows
and light on the walls of the cave resembled the cavity of the womb. And it did not take much to stretch my imagination that these people left the drawings of animals and symbols here to call on the goddess for nourishment or used this sacred space for fertility rituals.
Adding to the symbolic meaning is this phenomonen at the spring equinox. The light in the shape of arrows reaching the back cavity during the equinox at the very least could have served as a seasonal marker -- a prehistoric calendar. But perhaps it was even more, if the theory that this cave was a sanctuary cave dedicated to fertility rituals is true. Perhaps the people who lived here saw the forms of sunlight as a sign, a
message, a means of communication: when the
light of the sun forms an arrow in the cave-sanctuary, let us meet
here. And even moreso: "the goddess as the creative source of life was frequently rendered abstractly in the shape of a triangle or in the distinct division of the legs opened at the entrace to the womb" (Baring and Cashford, p. 11). What did these ancestors make of these triangles of sunlight inside their cave?
Of course we cannot know if they saw the same thing we can now observe -- changes in the landscape, the cave opening and even the tilt of the earth itself make it impossible to verify if they saw this phenomonen that can be observed today, 20,000 years later. We do know that the shape and orientation of the cave was natural, not intentionally built to channel the sun's position at certain points, like Stonehenge or other examples of megalithic constructions. So perhaps the ancestors just saw the cave as a cave and the sun as the sun, and we are the ones imbuing it with symbolic meaning thousands of years after. Or perhaps nature really does communicate through symbols.
Imagining Cova Parpalló as a sacred symbolic sanctuary of fertility brings a deeper meaning to the site and remains discovered there. And provides living evidence of a story of renewal aligned with the natural seasons, one that we still tell today. The spring equinox, of course, being the natural time of fertility
-- after the cold winter, when the sun is shining warmer, the start of
spring which until this day is the natural mating time for animals. And if this was the moment of "genetic contact", then the new generation would be born right around the time of winter solstice. The winter solstice represents -- until today -- birth and rebirth, regeneration and the return of light, warmth and sun -- hope and joy. The story we still tell every year around this time, of a baby born to light up the darkness.
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Special thanks to our guide, Toni Vergel Dos Santos.
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