Altamira Cave
35000 BCE – 13000 BCE
A limestone cave in northern Spain whose ceiling, covered in vivid polychrome paintings of bison, horses, and deer created some 14,000–16,500 years ago, forced 19th-century science to accept for the first time that Ice Age humans were capable of sophisticated representational art. Dismissed as an obvious forgery when first announced in 1880 — no one believed "primitive" Paleolithic people could have painted anything so accomplished — Altamira was ultimately vindicated two decades later and is now recognised as one of the founding sites of Paleolithic art studies worldwide.
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