Deciphering the Paintings of the Rincón Caves: A Neanderthal Alphabet to Avoid Getting Lost Inside

It's a drawing made with three fingers. Three lines that start separately and form a fan shape as they join at their lowest point. There are different versions, especially in the darker areas of the Victoria and Tesoro caves. In other areas, you can also find stripes, curves, dots, circles, or handprints, sometimes pressed onto the wall itself, other times blown onto the surface, with a predominance of red color. These are elements of the most archaic Paleolithic art called aniconic—without images—, preceding the figurative rock representations where bulls, goats, and other animals can be discerned. But more than art, experts have begun to see that the most primitive drawings served a function as a code, as a language. They were the closest thing to the current road signs used by our ancestors to avoid getting lost in the caverns.

"This is the alphabet of the Neanderthals and it is the first time we are showing it," explains the archaeologist Pedro Cantalejo, who along with the team researching the prehistoric cavities of Rincón de la Victoria has documented these codes with an inventory of these signs to be published next December in 'Neanderthal Málaga. A Journey through the Origins of Málaga' (ArdalesTur and Diputación de Málaga).

Up to 38 different marks have been found in the neighboring Tesoro and Victoria caves in a sort of speleological route that is present not only in these ancient caverns but also in the caves of Ardales and the Suerte de Antequera, where the team of the archaeologist, which also includes María del Mar Espejo, Luis-Efrén Fernández, and José Ramos, has also conducted research.

"At this moment, within the Tesoro Cave we have documented more than 120 painted panels," explains Cantalejo to give an idea of the collection of aniconic works these spaces hold. The 'Rosetta stone' of this Neanderthal visual language were those fingers impressed in fans that repeated in the darkest areas. "Their repetition led us to think that this graphic code must have been a way to explore, information to navigate the cave," the expert states, who has ventured into these darker areas of the complex with an extension of 1.7 kilometers. These galleries, which were dangerous in the Paleolithic, have now been tamed. In this sense, the cave complex of Rincón, which Pedro Cantalejo and his team currently tread, is very different from the one inhabited by Neanderthals and early sapiens.

Thus, the Tesoro Cave is the current name for two different but nearby cavities, the Higuerón and the Suizo, which were joined in the 20th century by their owners, the Laza family, for tourist exploitation. Additionally, the archaeological material from this double cavity was completely sold to the National Archaeological Museum. Meanwhile, about 400 meters away is the Victoria cave, which for decades was vandalized with contemporary graffiti as a sad reminder of the neglect of a space with a lot of history and with original prehistoric paintings inside. A neglect that science has taken care of rehabilitating since the return of investigations to these spaces using the latest techniques and methodologies has revolutionized their consideration, as is becoming evident in the IV Cycle of Conferences on Prehistoric Caves, which is being held this November in Rincón de la Victoria and is presenting the latest advances that, paradoxically, delay the chronology of these caves.

"The first thing is that these caves were not accessed through any mouth, but they are wells in which one entered with ropes. In the first areas, where natural light entered, archaeological materials and sediments were found, while as we delve into the deep galleries what we find is art," the researcher explains, concluding that the marks, signs, and drawings from the oldest phase are not artistic representations, but an informative code to navigate the caves. A very necessary signaling since "a cave is completely different when explored, entering it from the outer mouth, than when exiting it from the deepest part," he explains with knowledge, having traveled these galleries since the 80s.

The initiative to resume investigations in the Tesoro and Victoria caves in 2021, with authorization from the Junta de Andalucía, has allowed a change in the perception of these spaces—touristic in the first case—and scientifically neglected to the point that the new excavations and datings have placed these cavities of Rincón on the map of prehistory on the Peninsula by becoming one of the reference spaces to investigate the transition between the last Neanderthals and the first sapiens. And the advances of these studies supported and financed by the Rincón de la Victoria Town Hall have changed the history of what we knew about the prehistoric occupation of the cave.

Thus, the pioneering studies by the archaeologists Giménez Reyna and Jorge Rein, in the forties, set their antiquity in the upper Paleolithic, while already in the seventies, Professor F. Javier Fortea (1972) refined the dating to place its first use from the Magdalenian period, about 15,000 years ago. The first intervention of the team of María del Mar Espejo and Pedro Cantalejo already gave in 2024 very novel results by dating Gravettian era remains of the first homo sapiens who arrived on the Iberian Peninsula, about 28,800 years ago, in addition to Neanderthal traces with some 40,000 years of antiquity. Dates that had to be confirmed in this 2025 which, however, has offered a new surprise with readings that delve even further into prehistory with the latest datings that grant 52,000 years to the first paintings of the caves of Rincón made by the hands of the Neanderthals.

The delay of that temporal border is also joined by another novel conclusion of the research team - which also includes Cristina Liñán, Yolanda del Rosal, Hipólito Collado, Antonio Aranda, and José Antonio Molina - about the use of the Rincón cavities. "We are sure that, at least, there were seven occupations during those periods, meaning that seven human groups used the cave at different times without knowing each other, from about 50,000 years ago until about 6,000 years ago," informs the archaeologist Pedro Cantalejo who adds that the first inhabitants and, perhaps, the second were Neanderthals, while the last were Neolithic sapiens "who did not use the cave to live, but as a surface funerary deposit, as collective ossuaries, which is very important because we are talking about a model that is transferred to the exterior with megalithism, with the dolmens, in the interior of the province of Málaga."

With these results, the investigations in the caves of Rincón de la Victoria have allowed not only to complete the occupation of these cavities but also to reconstruct their interior exploration from the Paleolithic. "Speleology is as old as humans, because the moment we knew how to make fire, we could enter the caves since that's where we slept peacefully, because no significant predator entered," illustrates the expert who adds that, in addition to the study of sediments and paintings, they have encountered this year with an unexpected find: a lamp made with the tip of a cut stalagmite. "It was under some paintings of two stripes so it must have been left by its author," illustrates Pedro Cantalejo who will now take the piece to the laboratory. "This opens the door to new datings and to investigate the fuels they used," points out the expert who has found the switch to illuminate caves that had remained in the shadow zone of science.