Cuciulat Cave

Cuciulat Cave (Romanian: Peștera Cuciulat) is located on the Podișul Someșan plateau, near the village Cuciulat in the commune Letca, Sălaj County, Romania. It contains the oldest known cave paintings in Central Europe. The cave has been known to locals long before World War I, after which it was partially destroyed due to limestone quarrying that included the use of explosives. On 28 July 1978, a team of speleologists (A. Done, F. Cucu, T. Vadeanu, M. Codrescu, Simona Manolescu) from the Emil Racoviță Speleologic Club (Romanian: Clubul de Speologie Emil Racoviţă) explored the cave, noticing the existence of cave rock paintings in one of the caverns. The following spring archeologist Marin Cârciumaru accompanied by two team members launched the scientific research. Inside a moderately sized cavern of approximately 3.7 m × 2.5 m (12.1 ft × 8.2 ft), besides a well preserved image of a horse, an image of a feline, the representation of a bird, of another horse and an image that vaguely resembled a human figure were discovered. A chemical analysis established that the paintings were executed with red clay rich in iron oxides (13% Fe2O3). Marin Cârciumaru, according to analogies in Europe, estimated that the Cuciulat cave paintings were completed during the Upper Paleolithic, about 12,000 years ago. This dating could not be supported by other evidence of archaeological nature. A sig

Cave data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).