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National Museum and Research Center of Altamira

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Entrada al Museo de Altamira
Entrada al Museo de Altamira

The National Museum and Research Center of Altamira (Spanish: Museo Nacional y Centro de Investigación de Altamira), also known as Altamira Museum (Spanish: Museo de Altamira), is a center dedicated to the conservation of, research into and the sharing of information about the cave of Altamira in Santillana del Mar (Cantabria, Spain), named a World Heritage Site by Unesco. The museum offers prehistoric technology workshops to visitors, as well as a permanent exhibition called Times of Altamira, which contains objects from Altamira as well as those from other palaeolithic caves of Cantabria such as El Morín, El Juyo and El Rascaño. The New Altamira Cave, or Neocave, is also part of this exhibition: an artificial replica of the original caves, built in order to preserve the originals from damage arising from a massive influx of visitors.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article National Museum and Research Center of Altamira (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

National Museum and Research Center of Altamira
Acceso a las Cuevas de Altamira,

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N 43.3774 ° E -4.1225 °
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Museo Nacional y Centro de Investigación de Altamira (Museo de Altamira)

Acceso a las Cuevas de Altamira
39330
Cantabria, Spain
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culturaydeporte.gob.es

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Entrada al Museo de Altamira
Entrada al Museo de Altamira
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Cave of Altamira
Cave of Altamira

The Cave of Altamira ( AL-tə-MEER-ə; Spanish: Cueva de Altamira [ˈkweβa ðe altaˈmiɾa]) is a cave complex, located near the historic town of Santillana del Mar in Cantabria, Spain. It is renowned for prehistoric cave art featuring charcoal drawings and polychrome paintings of contemporary local fauna and human hands. The earliest paintings were applied during the Upper Paleolithic, around 36,000 years ago. The site was discovered in 1868 by Modesto Cubillas and subsequently studied by Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola.Aside from the striking quality of its polychromatic art, Altamira's fame stems from the fact that its paintings were the first European cave paintings for which a prehistoric origin was suggested and promoted. Sautuola published his research with the support of Juan de Vilanova y Piera in 1880, to initial public acclaim. However, the publication of Sanz de Sautuola's research quickly led to a bitter public controversy among experts, some of whom rejected the prehistoric origin of the paintings on the grounds that prehistoric human beings lacked sufficient ability for abstract thought. The controversy continued until 1902, by which time reports of similar findings of prehistoric paintings in the Franco-Cantabrian region had accumulated and the evidence could no longer be rejected.Altamira is located in the Franco-Cantabrian region and in 1985 was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO as a key location of the Cave of Altamira and Paleolithic Cave Art of Northern Spain. The cave can no longer be visited, for conservation reasons, but there are replicas of a section at the site and elsewhere.