Archaeologists are uncovering the meaning of a unique rock art site — SkimNews
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- Thierry Aubry and his team at the Côa Park Foundation uncovered razor-sharp stone bladelets dated to ~26,000 years ago beside the Penascosa engravings — the first time artifacts this old have been found next to the art in the valley.
- The three-week excavation also revealed hearths and additional flaked stone tools within touching distance of the engraved panels, giving researchers direct evidence that people made fire and used utensils 'inside the art,' according to Luís Luís of the Côa Park Foundation.
- The Côa valley holds the world's largest open-air collection of Palaeolithic rock art, stretching 17 kilometers along the river; its 1991 discovery triggered what Luís calls a 'Copernican revolution' by proving Ice Age art wasn't restricted to caves.
- Flint in the 27,000-year-old Gravettian layer originated at least 150 kilometers away in central Spain and 200 kilometers away in central Portugal, suggesting Côa sat at the heart of a vast Iberian exchange network.
- João Zilhão of the University of Lisbon said stylistically similar engravings now identified across Iberia, the Rhône valley and the Nile valley indicate the art functioned as 'a shared code of representation' across a 'very widespread area of cultural homogeneity.'
- Aubry argued the art served a dual purpose — transmitting mythology to visiting groups while conveying practical hunting information, since the repeated motif of female aurochs with ~6-month-old calves may depict herd behavior at a specific seasonal moment.
- The Côa engravings, produced between roughly 26,000 and 27,000 years ago, predate France's Lascaux cave paintings by about 10,000 years; freelance archaeologist Paul Bahn called the new occupation evidence 'delightful' confirmation that Ice Age peoples lived directly at open-air art sites.
Why it matters: The find ends decades of speculation about whether Côa's open-air sites doubled as living quarters, with hearths and 26,000-year-old tools proving hunter-gatherers occupied Penascosa while creating — not just ritually visiting — its engravings. It reframes Palaeolithic rock art as an everyday social technology embedded in seasonal gatherings of far-flung bands, not a purely sacred cave phenomenon.
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