One cave in Spain has helped reconstruct 40,000 years of prehistoric Europe
One cave in northern Spain has become almost a time machine for archaeologists. Its layers contain traces of people who have come there again and again over a period of about 40,000 years: from the time of the last Neanderthals to Ice Age hunters, the first farmers, shepherds and Bronze Age people.
This is the cave of El Miron in Cantabria. It began to be systematically excavated in 1996, and for three decades it has become one of the most important archaeological sites of the Iberian Peninsula.
The researchers compiled the results of years of work in a review article in the Journal of Anthropological Research.
Important: This is not a story of people continuously living in the same cave for 40,000 years without a break. Rather, El Miron was a place where different groups of people returned at different epochs - hunting, cooking, making tools, burying the dead, keeping animals, and leaving behind traces of daily life.
Details
El Miron Cave is located above the valley of the river Ason in Cantabria, near the Bay of Biscay. It has a wide entrance, a dry, light-coloured vestibule and deep layers of sediment. It is these layers that have become an archive: each level holds traces of its time.
Archaeologists have found materials from several eras: Middle Palaeolithic, Upper Palaeolithic, Gravettian, Solutre, Madeleine, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age. Simply put, the cave shows not just one episode but a long succession of human lifestyles, from hunting and gathering to farming, herding and early metallurgy.
Over the years of excavation, the team obtained over a hundred radiocarbon dates, studied hundreds of thousands of stone and bone objects, animal remains, hearths, traces of habitation, jewellery, engravings and ancient DNA. This has allowed them to reconstruct how people used the cave in different periods, rather than just listing the finds.
During the Ice Age, hunters and gatherers lived here. They brought prey into the cave, cut up carcasses, cooked food, and made tools from stone and bone. Among the animals mentioned in the El Miron materials are deer, ibex, horse, chamois, roe deer, and fish, including salmon. This shows that people used a variety of food sources rather than depending on only one type of hunting.
Later, around 6,500 years ago, the cave layers show signs of a new way of life: farming, domesticated animals, and pottery. Even later layers of the Copper and Bronze Age gave traces of food storage, animal pens and metallurgy.
The most famous find of El Miron is the so-called Red Lady. These are the remains of a woman who lived about 19,000 years ago. Her bones were covered with red ochre, a mineral pigment that was often used in rituals in ancient times. The woman was buried in a special place at the back of the cave lobby, next to a large engraved stone block.
Scientists do not know who she was to her group. It cannot be confidently written that she was a "shamaness," a "leader," or a "healer." But the very fact of the unusual burial shows that she was treated with great care. It is a rare occasion for archaeologists to be able to study not just the bones, but almost the entire context of an ancient rite.
Why it's important
El Miron helps us see prehistoric Europe not as a collection of individual finds, but as a long history of people adapting to changes in climate, animals, food and technology.
The same cave has experienced glacial cold, warming, the disappearance of some animal species, the emergence of new ways to get food, and the arrival of farming and herding. It therefore shows how human life has changed over tens of thousands of years.
Modern methods are particularly important. When excavations began in the 1990s, archaeology relied heavily on bones, tools and radiocarbon dates. Now ancient DNA, DNA from sediments, isotope analysis, dental calculus and microbiome studies have been added. Through this, scientists can learn not only what people did, but also what they ate, who they were genetically related to, what animals lived nearby and how the environment changed.
For example, DNA from sediments helps find traces of people and animals even where bones have not survived. This is especially important for ancient strata, where material is often fragmentary.
Background
The Iberian Peninsula was an important region during the Ice Age. When the north of Europe became too cold, the south-western areas could serve as a refuge for people and animals. Later, as the climate changed, groups of hunter-gatherers settled further north again.
The Red Lady of El Mirona has been one of the key finds for understanding this story. Her DNA has been linked to ancient hunter-gatherer groups that survived harsh climatic periods and participated in the subsequent settlement of Europe.
The cave is also important because it shows the transition from glacial hunters to later societies. In its layers we can trace how food, tools, animals, rituals and ways of using space changed.
Source
Research: Lawrence Guy Straus et al, "A Window into 40,000 Years of the Prehistory of Iberia: The Long Excavation of El Mirón Cave, Cantabrian Spain", Journal of Anthropological Research, 2026.