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ARCHAEOLOGY

Spain returns priceless booty to Colombia

It took over ten years but Spain on Monday returned to Colombia a huge and priceless find — almost 700 pieces of pre-Columbian art that Spanish authorities seized over a decade ago in a drug bust.

Published: 2 September 2014 09:06 CEST
Spain returns priceless booty to Colombia
"Recovering for our nation these 691 archaeological treasures has a value that is really difficult to put any price on," said Columbian Foreign Minister María Ángela Holguín. Photo: Luis Acosta/AFP

The catalogue of museum-worthy artefacts includes vases decorated with human faces, ceramic bowls decorated with geometric designs in ochre tones, musical instruments, necklaces and even small figures of people — dating from 1400 BC up to the 16th century.

"Recovering for our nation these 691 archaeological treasures has a value that is really difficult to put any price on. They are from many of our (indigenous) cultures, and getting them home took years," Colombian Foreign Minister María Ángela Holguín said at a briefing, presenting 50 of the remarkable pieces.

The artefacts — from Calima, Narino, San Agustin, Quimbaya, Sinu and other groups — had been spirited out of Colombia in 2001 before being seized from drug traffickers by Spanish authorities in 2003.

The collection was found in a Madrid home, and is estimated to be worth around €5 million ($6.6 million).

The objects' return was "a triumph against the illegal traffic of cultural artifacts the likes of which has never been seen before," Fabián Sanabria told Spain's El País newspaper.

"This collection of pieces is the largest that has been recuperated in the last few decades. Never before has a whole museum been repatriated," he added.

An exhibition of the pieces is now planned.

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ARCHAEOLOGY

Study confirms ancient cave art in southern Spain was created by Neanderthals

Neanderthals, long perceived to have been unsophisticated and brutish, really did paint stalagmites in a Spanish cave more than 60,000 years ago, according to a study published on Monday.

Published: 3 August 2021 09:13 CEST
Study confirms ancient cave art in southern Spain was created by Neanderthals
Photo: Joao Zilhao/ICREA/AFP

The issue had roiled the paleoarchaeology community ever since the publication of a 2018 paper attributing red ocher pigment found on the stalagmitic dome of Cueva de Ardales (Malaga province) to our extinct “cousin” species.

The dating suggested the art was at least 64,800 years old, made at a time when modern humans did not inhabit the continent.

But the finding was contentious, and “a scientific article said that perhaps these pigments were a natural thing,” a result of iron oxide flow, Francesco d’Errico, co-author of a new paper in the journal PNAS told AFP.

A new analysis revealed the composition and placement of the pigments were not consistent with natural processes — instead, the pigments were applied through splattering and blowing.

(Photo by JORGE GUERRERO / AFP)

What’s more, their texture did not match natural samples taken from the caves, suggesting the pigments came from an external source.

More detailed dating showed that the pigments were applied at different points in time, separated by more than ten thousand years.This “supports the hypothesis that the Neanderthals came on several occasions, over several thousand years, to mark the cave with pigments,” said d’Errico, of the University of Bordeaux.

It is difficult to compare the Neanderthal “art” to wall paintings made by prehistoric modern humans, such as those found in the Chauvet-Pont d’Arc cave of France, more 30,000 years old.

But the new finding adds to increasing evidence that Neanderthals, whose lineage went extinct around 40,000 years ago, were not the boorish relatives of Homo sapiens they were long portrayed to be.

The cave-paintings found in three caves in Spain, one of them in Ardales, are throught to have been created between 43,000 and 65,000 years ago, 20,000 years before modern humans arrived in Europe. (Photo by JORGE GUERRERO / AFP)

The team wrote that the pigments are not “art” in the narrow sense of the word “but rather the result of graphic behaviors intent on perpetuating the symbolic significance of a space.”

The cave formations “played a fundamental role in the symbolic systems of some Neanderthal communities,” though what those symbols meant remains a mystery for now.

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