Bandi Hans-Georg. The Art of the Stone Age: Forty Thousand Years of Rock Art

New York: Crown Publishers, 1961. — 287 p.At the close of the 19th century the entrances to caves in northern Spain and south-western France were rediscovered after they had remained sealed for thousands of years. In these caves lay hidden an undreamt-of wealth of artistic works dating from the Ice Age: magnificent polychrome murals and roof frescoes, decorated partly with figures of animals now long extinct, partly with vivid engravings and a vast number of curious signs. The disclosure of such an ancient prehistoric art came as a complete surprise to a world that had hitherto sought the origins of human artistic endeavour in the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. The discovery of Ice Age art had therefore to encounter a multitude of obstacles, and it was only a quarter of a century later that this art finally found acceptance.
In 1869 the entrance to the cave of Altamira was discovered by a man hunting foxes in a tract of meadow land near the village of Santillana del Mar, in northern Spain, Ten years later Marcelino de Sautuola, a local nobleman, commenced excavations at Altamira. One day he took his little daughter Maria, then five years old, into the cave. While playing in a chamber some 30 yards from the entrance her eye was caught by the magnificent frescoes on the roof. Since Sautuola was the first man to have entered the cave he was convinced that no modern artist could have created these paintings. However, in the scientific world doubts were expressed as to their authenticity. At the Congress of Anthropology and Prehistoric Archaeology held at Lisbon in 1880 the Altamira paintings were dismissed as forgeries and were soon once again consigned to oblivion.