The Altamira cave is a natural cavity in the rock in which one of the most important pictorial and artistic cycles of prehistory is preserved.

Since its discovery in 1868 by Modesto Cubillas and its subsequent study by Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, it has been excavated and studied by the main prehistorians of each of the epochs once it was accepted that it belonged to the Palaeolithic period.

The paintings and engravings in the cave belong mainly to the Magdalenian and Solutrian periods and, some others, to the Gravetian and the beginning of the Aurignacian, the latter according to evidence using uranium series. Thus it can be said that the cave was used for several periods, totalling 22 000 years of occupation, from about 35 600 years ago until 13 000 years ago, when the main entrance to the cave was sealed by a cave-in, all within the Upper Palaeolithic period.

The cave of Altamira was discovered in 1868 by an Asturian weaver named Modesto Cubillas (Modesto Cobielles Pérez) who, while hunting, found the entrance while trying to free his dog, which was trapped in the crevices of some rocks in pursuit of prey.

At the time, the news of the discovery of a cave did not have the slightest significance among the locals, as it is a karstic terrain, characterised by thousands of caves, so the discovery of another cave was nothing new.

Cubillas told Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, a wealthy local landowner and "mere amateur" of palaeontology, of whose estate he was the sharecropper; however, the latter did not visit it until at least 1875, and very probably in 1876.

He visited it in its entirety and recognised some abstract signs, such as repeated black stripes, to which he did not attach any importance because he did not consider them to be the work of man.

Three or four years later, in the summer of 1879, Sautuola returned to Altamira for the second time, this time accompanied by his eight-year-old daughter María Sanz de Sautuola y Escalante.

He was interested in excavating the entrance to the cave in order to find some remains of bones and flint, like the objects he had seen at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1878.

The discovery of the cave paintings was actually made by the child. While her father remained at the mouth of the cave, she went into the cave until she reached a side room. There she saw some paintings on the ceiling and ran to tell her father. Sautuola was astonished to contemplate the grandiose set of paintings of those strange animals that covered almost the entire vault.