The exploration of the Cova de la Vila de La Febró, in the Baix Camp region, Tarragona, has revealed an unprecedented prehistoric work of art. One more piece of the hidden treasure of the Mediterranean arc, composed of animal figures, objects that could represent idols, and enigmatic symbols whose meaning we cannot reach. Due to their style and characteristics, we estimate that they were made between 5,000 and 3,000 years ago.
A language frozen in stone
And if time were not an arrow that moves inexorably towards the future? What if we could stop it, manipulate it, even travel through it?
The movie The arrivaldirected by Denis Villeneuve, explores the idea of a language capable of transcending the temporal limitations of the human being. It’s not just science fiction: the archaeological discovery in the Cueva de la Vila in La Febró (Baix Camp, Tarragona) shows that language and time can be frozen in stone.
A panel of more than 8 meters long, with more than a hundred prehistoric engravings, transports us to a time when the ancient inhabitants of the area expressed their thoughts and beliefs through rock art.
The discovery of the cave
During the last decade, from the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES-CERCA)we have worked on the header of the siurana river keeping track of the latest societies of paleolithic hunter-gatherers that disappeared more than ten millennia ago and of the first peasant communities that later settled in the Muntanyes de Prades.
In 2014 we crawled through the narrow galleries of the Cova de la Vila, from the entrance known as boca d’en Peixet. At the end of a gallery, we discovered a dead-end room where animal and human bones could be seen everywhere, and also fragments of huge prehistoric ceramic vessels that could not have gotten there because of the narrow passages and nooks and crannies we had left behind. .
But the great secret that the deposit jealously guarded was yet to be discovered.
Arrival in the oval room
May 13, 2021 will be remembered as a historic milestone for the prehistoric archeology of Catalonia. During explorations carried out by the ERE speleological group of the Catalonia Excursionists Center and the Aliga Excursionists Center (SIE-CEA), it was possible to open access to a small hole between blocks and sediments.
Once inside they found a large oval room. The speleologist Juli Serrano was the first to enter and his surprise was enormous when he found a mural full of lines and figures on one of the walls of the room. Although he did not know how to interpret them, he did realize that what he saw could be very old. “When I saw the engravings, I felt a great emotion that will accompany me throughout my life & rdquor ;, he recalls excitedly. He had just discovered one of the most important sets of prehistoric rock art in Catalonia, and he adds to the collection of rock art of the mediterranean arcWorld Heritage).
The speleologists, puzzled by the find, contacted us and the authorities.
The Engraving Room of the Cova de la Vila
Our colleague Ramón Viñas, a specialist in prehistoric art and collaborator of IPHES-CERCA, was the first to examine the traces on the walls. He was immediately fascinated with the relevance of the composition and its state of preservation.
The set of prehistoric art in the Engraving Room is unique due to its composition, divided into five horizontal lines with different engraved figures, each with its own meaning and symbolism. Although it has not yet been studied in depth, it is believed to be one of the best examples of abstract sketchy art in the Mediterranean basin. According to Viñas, “this composition is completely unusual and shows the worldview of the populations during the neolithization of the territory& rdquor ;.
The panel presents more than a hundred schematic motifs. The representations, made exclusively with the engraving technique, are divided into two types: those made with dihedral or pointed tools and those traced directly with the finger on the soft wall.
The set stands out for a series of quadrupedal, steliform and reticulated zoomorphs, as well as for a composition reminiscent of a large eyed idol.
We believe that the set was not used for too long due to the little overlap between the motifs and its stylistic homogeneity. These motifs are recognized in other parts of the Peninsula in a period between 4,000 and 1,000 years BCE, although for the moment it is difficult to specify their antiquity.
Why has this panel survived intact to this day?
In collaboration with the Department of Culture of the Generalitat of Catalonia and the Town Hall of La Febró, we take care of the investigation and conservation of this unique site.
The excavations began last year and already offer us some clues. We know that the ground that our caving colleagues stepped on on the day of the discovery is the same on which the people who drew strange symbols on the walls with their fingers circulated. An unusual fact, yet to be confirmed, brings us closer to that moment. It is a lamp made from a sea shell that appeared under the panel of engravings. It was probably used to illuminate the room and was left there just before a landslide covered the entrance to the room for several millennia, thus preserving the complex to this day.
We lack the manual to decipher its symbols
The movie The arrival was inspired by the relativistic linguistic hypothesis of Sapir-Whorf, which maintains that the language we speak determines our way of understanding and perceiving reality. Therefore, when humans learned the language of heptapods, their perception of time changed. These squids crossed galaxies to share their language and their way of understanding reality. Prehistoric communities unfortunately did not do it, or rather, they did not do it consciously.
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If this linguistic hypothesis is true, when a language dies, a particular way of understanding reality disappears. Rock engravings were a way of communication, a way of expressing and understanding reality for these prehistoric communities that, once they disappeared, left us with the imprint of their fingers, unknowingly, a code with their way of understanding the world. And to us, the archaeologists, they bequeathed a million questions to answer, but they took with them the manual or dictionary to be able to decipher it.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. read the original.
Antonio Rodriguez-Hidalgo, Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES); Diego Lombao Vazquez, University of Santiago de Compostela and Josep Vallverdu Poch, Rovira i Virgili University