The Park of Prehistory

Latitude: 43.1509743 Length: -6.1000729
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Homo sapiens sapiens arrived in Europe 40.000 years ago . They displaced the Neanderthals and became the dominant species. They inhabited caves and natural shelters during the final phase of the Ice Age. They were the first inhabitants with a symbolic mindset, and therefore also the first artists . The Cantabrian coast was a prime location for this art, as after the last major ice age, most of Europe became uninhabitable, covered in ice.

The Paleolithic period was confined to the limestone mountains, where caves abound, and for this reason, some forty sites of parietal art have been discovered in Asturias to date , some of them truly exceptional. All styles of prehistoric painting , from the Aurignacian, the earliest, are represented in Asturian caves, reaching their peak in the brilliant Magdalenian style of the Tito Bustillo Cave in Ribadesella.

Where is the Park of Prehistory?

Located 40 kilometers from Oviedo , in the town of San Salvador de Alesga (Teverga), the Prehistory Park is the largest collection of replicas from this fascinating period of human history. It features exact copies of the main European sites of cave paintings and portable art, all selected according to rigorous scientific criteria and presented through facsimile reproductions, copies, recreations, photographs, models, and reconstructions. The replicas, highly faithful to the originals, are organized according to an engaging and educational approach.

The park's location, in a valley of great ecological and scenic value , with hardly any traces of human activity in the immediate vicinity, and with the buildings buried underground, completely camouflaged within the environment, makes us feel closer to the cavemen of old. It comprises 25 hectares of untouched land, at the foot of the impressive Peña Sobia, in the heart of the Las Ubiñas Natural Park.

The museum itself comprises a complex of three buildings . The first houses the visitor center and a cafeteria. After a short walk across the Páramo River on a new bridge, we see another crescent-shaped building with a green roof, called La Galería (The Gallery ). Beyond the spectacular entrance with a circular skylight open to the sky, visitors enter an interior of approximately one thousand square meters.

What do we find in the museum?

Inside we find a complete circuit of audiovisuals, documents, and reproductions of paintings and engravings from the Upper Paleolithic.

The Chauvet Horse Panel or the Lascaux Black Cow, both in France; the central part of the Altamira Bison Ceiling, the Covalanas Deer Chamber (Cantabria), the Ekain Bear Cave (Basque Country), the La Covaciella Bison in Cabrales (Asturias), the Llonín Cave Sign Panel in Peñamellera Alta (Asturias), as well as tools and figures from Spain, France, Germany, Austria, Czechia or Russia.

In this artificial gallery we can better understand why Paleolithic art emerged , who created the cave paintings and with what techniques, and what meanings have been attributed to them over the last two hundred years of research.

From each cave, the paintings that best illustrate the different existing theories about the motivation of the prehistoric artist have been chosen , such as those that link it to a purely artistic or leisure concern, passing through those related to fertility and hunting rites, those that attribute its authorship to shamans in altered states of consciousness, or those that conceive of a totemic origin venerating certain animals, up to the structuralist interpretations, according to which cave art is a coded language of signs and in which the cave - of feminine meaning - symbolizes all its known world.

The third building, very close to the previous one, is called the Cave of Caves , a fitting name given its purpose: to house complete replicas of three important cave galleries . These exact copies were made using natural dyes, crafted from the same materials as the prehistoric caves; the limestone walls and ceilings have the same cracks and light reflections as the originals, and the structure, humidity, darkness, and silence have all been reproduced.

The 25-minute visit takes you through three rooms, beginning with the Gallery of Horses at Tito Bustillo, where you can appreciate the rich polychromy used in this type of artwork. From there, you travel 700 kilometers to the Niaux Cave in France to see the Black Room, where you'll find more defined and perfectly outlined drawings. From this second room, you return to Asturias to view a reproduction of the Candamo Cave's Dressing Room , where it's explained how those early artists not only sought to create an image, but also paid special attention to the location of their works and the relief of the walls where they painted them.

Throughout the visit we walked on uneven and uneven ground, and the guides, as in the original caves, required flashlights to give their explanations.

In short, "The Teverga Prehistory Park is unique, and the replicas are extraordinary ." That's the opinion of Jean Clottes, head of the scientific study of the Chauvet Cave and a leading expert on the cave art of Lascaux and Niaux, among others. Clottes has served as the French Director General of Cultural Heritage and is currently the President of the International Committee for Rock Art.