Black signs, Altamira National Museum and Research Centre, Santillana del Mar, Cantabria at Spain is culture.

Styles

In this section you can search all our contents throughout the different stages in the history of art in Spain, to find styles such as Baroque, Gothic, Mudejar and many, many more.

Modernism and Avant-garde movements The turn of the century brought new winds of modernity. The aesthetic sensibility of the time was marked by a different, freer attitude towards art and life.

Topics

In this section you can search among all our contents by topic to find the different resources available in Spain, such as museums, routes, destinations, monuments and many, many more.

Audience

This section provides access to all the contents in a personalised way, according to your own particular interests and socio-demographic profile.

Professionals

Innovation in culture

Autonomous Regions

This section provides access to the contents in each autonomous region by browsing through maps.

Outstanding works / Prehistory / Altamira National Museum and Research Centre

Black signs

Share
Locate

Add to favourites

Black signs. Museo Nacional y Centro de Investigación de Altamira © Pedro Saura

Category

Painting

Date

15000 BP

Cultural background

Palaeolithic

Original title

Signos negros

Altamira National Museum and Research Centre
Santillana del Mar
Cantabria

Facebook

Figures and signs that are similar to those on the large ceiling, but made in a gallery that is about one metre high by one metre wide, in the deepest part of the cave.

Cultural motivations brought people there at different times to draw and engrave these signs, 250 metres from the entrance. They probably entered the cave with torches or grease lamps used as primitive oil lamps to be able to draw this group of reticulated signs (that look like a net), strictly compartmentalised and repeated next to the most prominent crack in this deep gallery.