1. Welcome to the Prehistoric Park of Teverga Bilingual Section IES Ramón Menéndez Pidal – Aviles April 6th 2011
2. It’s a sunny and warm spring morning. The landscape is beautiful. It’s been a long journey, but it’s been worth it.
3. Our visit starts at the building called The Gallery. The room is at least one thousand square metres and helps us understand better why Palaeolithic art began, who the artists were and what techniques were used in cave paintings.
4. There we meet Paulina, our guide. She is Polish, but she speaks very good English. She is patient and kind and she gives us a lot of useful information.
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6. That is why there are examples of paintings showing animals impossible to find in Europe nowadays. LIONS PENGUINS RHINOS
7. WHAT DID THE HOMO SAPIENS PAINT? ANIMALS SIGNS AND SYMBOLS HUMAN FIGURES
8. The most common animal paintings show: AUROCHS BEARS BISON GOATS HORSES MAMMOTHS
9. HOW DID THEY CREATE THEIR PAINTINGS? They used grinders to get their pigments from minerals. The most common were the iron oxide for the reds, browns and purples; and the charcoal for black. GRINDER Iron oxide Charcoal
10. They always studied the walls and made use of the natural forms of the stone ( hollows, bulges, cracks ) by making them a part of their drawings. This way they were much more realistic. REINDEER
11. OWL MAMMOTH On other occasions they didn’t paint, but they used sharp stones to make marks on the walls and engrave their drawings.
12. They painted with their hands and fingers, but sometimes they made primitive aerographs with hollow bones . We can say they made the first examples of graffiti.
13. It was dark in the caves, so they used marrow lamps to light them up. Torches and bonfires had a problem: they blackened the walls.
14. The display cases in The Gallery are full of very interesting objects.
16. This is the Venus of Willendorf. It doesn’t represent a real woman. It represents an idea: the idea of fertility.
17. You can also see an example of a Palaeolithic burial site. It was a middle-aged man about 50 years old. He was a tall man, over 1.70 metres and he was dressed in fur clothes.
18. We want to thank our guide, Paulina, for her help.
21. Then we moved to the other building: The Cave of Caves.
22. In the Cave of Caves you can see the exact copies of three important examples of Palaeolithic art: The Camarin of Candamo The Gallery of Horses of Tito Bustillo Cave The Black Room of Niaux Cave
23. After visiting the Cave of Caves, we were lucky to meet a group of friendly homo sapiens
24. On our way back to the bus, we had a snack at the café and bought some souvenirs. We had a great time!
