Cueva de La Pasiega - The Cave Paintings of La Pasiega

The Cave Paintings of La Pasiega

On the plan proposed by André Leroi-Gourhan, La Pasiega can be taken as a good example of the "Cave as Sanctuary", or to be more precise as a collection of sanctuaries of different epochs, arranged according to certain models. In fact this idea developed in the thoughts of the distinguished French prehistorian precisely when he visited the Cantabrian caves, while he was participating in a group of foreign investigators who were excavating in the cave of El Pendo during the 1950s. "I can definitely confirm that the study of the rock art of northern Spain was decisive in the master's ideas, which since then have become famous through his many publications." For Leroi-Gourhan, this type of cave has a rather complex spatial or topographical hierarchy in which it is possible to discern principal groups of animals (bos facing equus, forming a duality), which occupy the most conspicuous or preferred areas, complemented by secondary animals (deer, goat, etc) and other more occasional species which however fulfil their subsidiary function: on the other hand it is usual that the ideomorphic symbols appear in peripheral or marginal areas, or in those which are difficult to reach:

Animals and symbols correspond, therefore, to the same basic formulae, logically binary and even defended by the fact that animals of the same species appear frequently in pairs, male and female, though the dispositivo is so complex that we ought not suppose an explanation purely based in the symbolism of fertility; the first element is the presence of two species A-B (horse-bison); confronted with two types of signs, masculine and feminine, an attempt to attribute to the horse and bison the same symbolic value or, at least, a bivalency of the same kind as that of the symbols of the two categories (S1 and S2)

It is supposed that there are exceptions to this rule, many variants which depend on regions and epochs, the metaphyical significance of which is not entirely clear in its general outline, but which should be explained in a particular way, also at La Pasiega.

Joaquín González Echegaray and later his fellow-workers have made various counts of the species of animal represented, one of which reckoned more than 700 painted forms in this cave, among others: 97 deer (69 females and 28 males), 80 horses, 32 ibex, 31 cattle (17 bison and 14 aurochs), two reindeer, a carnivorous animal, one rebeco, a megaceros, a bird and a fish; also there may be a mammoth and about 40 quadrupeds not clearly identified; also the ideomorphs, such as roof-shaped and other surprisingly varied symbols (more than 130), and very often including various anthropomorphs and hundreds of marks and partly erased traces.