Using drone technology, archaeologists in Spain have found ancient murals in remote caves in the nation’s east.
According to a statement from the team at the University of Alicante in Spain, drones enabled researchers to quickly acquire evidence of never-before-seen cave drawings dating from 5,000 to 7,500 years ago. The results of the archaeologists’ research were released last month in the Spanish scholarly journal Lucentum.
The project made it possible to more easily investigate places that would have otherwise required “opening complex access routes climbing,” according to the statement.
The researchers said that they quickly discovered their initial findings after using drones to fly over a quarry in the Penàguila municipality of Alicante.
According to lead author Francisco Javier Molina Hernández, an archaeologist at the University of Alicante, “this area is well known for housing numerous groups with prehistoric art.”
The outcome was the discovery of a new location with different-styled prehistoric cave drawings, which will, in our opinion, be highly useful for the research.
According to the statement, climbers later went to the location. They confirmed the presence of numerous painted figures in various styles, including stylized human figures and animals like goats and deer, some of which had been shot at by arrows.
Virginia Barciela and Ximo Martorell Briz, two other archaeologists, collaborated with Hernández, who has been dubbed “Indiana Drones” by the Spanish media, on the project.
The study was conducted in the Spanish city of Alicante’s Penàguila municipality.
“Many other caves have never been inspected because they are located in inaccessible areas,” he continued.
Due to the numerous figures seen, the experts claimed that the discovery is one of the most important Neolithic rock art sites found in the Valencia region in recent years.
According to a study, Neanderthals painted caves long before modern humans in Europe.
According to Molina, “Secondly, the discovery of new cave paintings in this type of cave shows that prehistoric man developed sophisticated climbing techniques, possibly using ropes or wooden scaffolding.”
According to him, the proximity of some caves to the sunrise or their visual domination of a particular area may have motivated them to face these risks to access them.
According to Molina, the team’s next step is to deploy more potent drones to capture photographs of a higher caliber and to broaden their research into more regions of Spain, Portugal, and other parts of Europe.
