Los Murcielagos Cave

Google Maps:
37.542139, -4.303977

Type of site:
Cave

Place of location: The cave is in the south of the province of Córdoba, in the Natural Park of the Sierras Sub-béticas, 4km from the town of Zuheros and at 980m above sea level, near the top of Cerro de los Murciélagos. The cave is well-signposted from the CP-85 on the same signs giving the direction towards Zuheros. When you arrive at the town, the direction of the cave is signposted again. The cave is 4km away from the town on the CP-247. The access road is good and leads directly to the cave.
Village/Town: Zuheros
Municipality: Zuheros (Córdoba)
Region: Andalucía
State: Spain
Telephone: (+34) 957 694 545
Website: https://turismodelasubbetica.es/zuheros/cueva-los-murcielagos
E-mail: turismo@zuheros.es

Natural Environment:

Natural Park of the Sierras Subbéticas https://turismodelasubbetica.es/?lang=en

Archaeological evidences in the site:

Los Murciélagos Cave and Zuheros itself are tourist attractions. The representations of ibex and Neolithic human remains are of great importance, as well as the Upper Palaeolithic engravings. The cave is also very well decorated with calcite formations. The Historical Centre of Zuheros has been listed as a cultural property since 2003 and the cave is a Natural Monument. The cave is technically an elongated and deep geological opening formed by water action. It has two entrances: Cueva Grande and Cueva Chica. The first entrance leads to an entrance chamber and a series of passages, such as the Corridor of the Paintings which opens in the Sala de las Formaciones, beautifully decorated with stalactites and stalagmites. Another chamber with further formations, Sala del Órgano, narrows towards the Sala del Femur. This leads to the Sala de la Celosía or de la Campana, and later the Sala de los Estratos. This is near the exit of Cueva Chica. The cave is over two kilometres long, although the visitable route is only 450m (about 25% of the total). The visitors have to go up and down 700 steps and reach a depth of 63m. The average temperature is 9º C, while the entrance of Cueva Chica reaches 4º C.

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Opening Times:

https://turismodelasubbetica.es/zuheros/cueva-los-murcielagos#tab-1497861935940-2-2

Booking and access:

For reasons of conservation and regeneration of the microclimate of the Cave, and as the visit is guided, access to it is limited. To guarantee your visit it is necessary to make a reservation in advance. Reservations can be made by email turismo@zuheros.es or by telephone (+34) 957 69 45 45, from Wednesday to Sunday (except holidays), during opening hours from 10:00 to 13:30.

Nearby cultural destinations:

Settlements: Copper Age, Neolithic, Prehistoric, Roman and Medieval sites in general in Sierra Mágina, Lomas de Baeza and Úbeda, Sierras de Cazorla, Segura and Las Villas, etc. Rock-art sites: Copper Age, Neolithic. https://turismodelasubbetica.es/zuheros/que-visitar/

Nearby natural destinations:

Accommodations (Tourism Website):
https://turismodelasubbetica.es/zuheros/
Restaurants (Tourism Website):
https://turismodelasubbetica.es/zuheros/

Age of the artistic representations:

The oldest occupations that have been documented in Cueva de los Murciélagos date back to the Middle Palaeolithic (Upper Pleistocene), about 35,000 years ago. The Upper Palaeolithic levels, dated between 30,000 and 9,000 BC, have yielded remains of fauna and plants and stone artefacts mainly made from flint. The rock art belongs to the Post-Palaeolithic period, but it is the Neolithic, the best understood period in southern Iberia, between the sixth and fourth millennia BC, that has remains documented culturally and formally. They belong to Stages A and C of the Neolithic. Occupations: Bronze Age, Neolithic, Middle Palaeolithic, Upper Palaeolithic, Roman period. Rock-art sites: Neolithic, Upper Palaeolithic.

General description of the destination:

The paintings are distributed in two quite different areas: 1. Starting at Cueva Grande entrance, the first area is in “Pasillo” and “Paso del Jubilado”, where the first motifs are mainly red dots and lines and other small lines and combinations of parallel vertical lines with oval shapes in black. This first area continues in the “Corridor of the Paintings”, a passage over 17m long with a large number of painted figures distributed in three panels. There are over thirty quadrupeds which have been identified as ibex because of their long horns. They are of different sizes and are shown in different positions: vertical, horizontal and oblique, giving a sense of movement. The “Frieze of the Ibex” is particularly striking: it contains four large animals with enormous horns in a horizontal position, one behind the other, following the shape of the cave wall. 2. The second area is in Sala de los Estratos, near Cueva Chica entrance. They consist of four figures crossed by a perpendicular line. Their theme and style suggests they are more recent than the animal figures. In another part of the site there is a figure of an idol, in black, formed by two divergent vertical lines starting from a horizontal line, with two dots between them representing the eyes. The cave probably has more paintings; however, these are the ones that are known and have been published to date.

History of the site:

When the importance of the remains was discovered, the cave was first explored by army officers in 1938. In 1945, the famous mining engineer from Cordoba, Antonio Carbonell Trillo Figueroa published a series of painted signs in the cave, referring to several “phi-shaped” human figures in the Sala de los Estratos in Cueva Chica. The cave became well-known after it was excavated in 1962 and 1969. The radiocarbon determinations gave an age of between 4300 and 3900 BC for the deposit, the first dates for the Neolithic in Western Andalusia. The Schematic rock art in the Corridor of the Paintings was discovered in the early 1960s and published in 1964 by J. M. Piñol Aguadé. In 1968, J. Bernier and J. Fortea continued the studies. The first work to open the site as a show cave was carried out in 1969. In 1988, the Culture Department of the Andalusian government gave permission for the cave to be opened, with restrictions in the time, route and number of visitors.

Museographic resources description:

In the access to the cave there are an Interpretation Centre (Ecomuseo de la Cueva de Los Murciélagos, telf. +34 957 694 545), where is possible to increase knowledge about the cave and its geomorphological context. The Archaeological Museum of Zuheros show us a monographic exhibition of prehistoric and historical objects of Los Murciélagos Cave . It begins with the tools of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic. Stands out in the Neolithic period, with ceramics decorated to the red ochre, ornaments elements and all kinds of tools made in stone and bone. Also are important the materials of the Age of the Copper and of the Bronze. It finishes in the Roman stage.