Qualla: Cuevas de la Araña

Cuevas de la Araña: Introduction

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Some eight thousand years ago, on a rock wall in the hills above the Escalona river, someone painted a small human figure clinging to a rope, one arm plunged into a cluster of bees. Around the climber the artist added dark specks, the insects themselves, drawn in flight. It is the oldest known picture of a person gathering honey, and one of the earliest depictions of bees anywhere on Earth. The caves that hold it are named, aptly, the Spider Caves.

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Cuevas de la Araña: The Oldest Sweet Tooth

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The honey-gatherer is the reason the Coves de l'Aranya, Cuevas de la Arana in Spanish, matter to the whole story of our species. The painting is the earliest surviving evidence that Homo sapiens sought out and ate honey, and the earliest clear image of bees. Look closely and the ...

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Cuevas de la Araña: A Teacher's Find

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The caves sit in the municipality of Bicorp, in the interior of the Valencia region, tucked into the valley of the Escalona river where dry limestone hills fold down toward the water. They came to wider attention in the early twentieth century thanks to a local schoolteacher, Jau...

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Cuevas de la Araña: Hunt and Harvest

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Honey was not the only story worth painting here. Another scene shows a goat hunt rendered with bows and arrows, hunters and prey caught mid-action in the lively, stick-limbed style typical of the rock art scattered across eastern Spain. Together the paintings sketch a way of lif...

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Cuevas de la Araña: Painted for the Ages

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Spider Caves are part of a much larger treasure. They belong to the Rock Art of the Iberian Mediterranean Basin, a UNESCO World Heritage Site spanning hundreds of shelters and cave walls along Spain's eastern flank, collectively one of the richest records of prehistoric life ...

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