Spain’s Economic Problems

Philip V’s claim to the Spanish crown was confirmed by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. In return, the Bourbons ceded Sicily and parts of Milan to Savoy. Austria received the rest of Milan, Naples and Sardinia. George Louis, elector of Hanover, gained recognition for his uncle’s annexation of Saxe-Lauenberg, better known as Lower Saxony.

Philip’s wife, Maria Luisa of Savoy, died in 1714. She left two sons, Louis and Ferdinand. Soon after he married Elisabeth Farnese, daughter of the prince of Parma. She saw Spain as the treasury to finance the acquisition of fiefdoms for her children.

Spain joined with France and Prussia in the War of Polish Succession in1733. Their opponents included Upper Saxony, simply called Saxony, and Austria. By then, the earlier ruler of Lower Saxony had died as George I of Great Britain, and his son, George Augustus, was the British monarch.

Spain retook Naples and Sicily. Elisabeth’s oldest son, Charles, was made ruler of the two by the Treaty of Vienna that ended the war in 1738. The next year, Philip suspended payment of his debts, and George II declared war.

His navy attacked Spanish possessions and took Florida. Their battles extended into the War of Austrian Succession, concluded by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. Spain regained Florida in exchange for meeting demands it pay its debts to Great Britain. Louis XV and George II renewed their battle for supremacy with the Seven Year’s War in 1754.

One cause of the 1739 bankruptcy was the decline of silver production in New Spain. Mines required mercury, which was shipped from Almadén. Great Britain’s fleet and its pirates harried supply ships. When the amount of available silver declined, Spain had less money for war.

Decade	Total Peso Value	Increase	% Increase
1710-19	65,828,482
1720-29	84,151,727	18,323,245	0.28
1730-39	93,677,484	9,525,757	0.11
1740-49	108,124,854	14,447,370	0.15
1750-59	130,219,836	22,094,982	0.20
1760-69	199,556,109	69,336,273	0.53

Silver Shipments from Nueva España by Decade

Nuevo México wasn’t directly threatened by the British, but it suffered the consequences of irrelevancy.

Even before Elisabeth’s wars, Nueva España hadn’t been able to meet the costs of defending its mines and frontiers from increasingly hostile Natives. When Santa Fé asked for a presidio near the Jicarilla Apache to protect itself and northern México against the Comanche, Pedro de Rivera had suggested manning it with men taken from other presidios. He finally decided the Comanche were less a threat to the viceroyalty than the French encroaching along the Gulf of Mexico. He cut presidio forces by 20%.

Silver had been discovered in the region south of modern Arizona in 1736. Eleven years later, in 1747, the viceroy demanded the New Mexico governor send troops for his campaign against the Apache along the Gila river. Joaquín Codallos couldn’t. He had reports the Utes were attacking the Navajo, who were under protection. He had to fight the Comanche and Utes north of Abiquiú to protect settlers who were threatening to abandon the area.

The restraints of the Spanish treasury, which lead first to conserving then to diverting military sources to war threats on the coast, ultimately made it impossible for Nuevo México to send aid to protect silver which might alleviate the stress.

Notes: More on proposed Jicarilla presidio in posts for 11 October 2015.

Bakewell, P. J. Silver Mining and Society in Colonial Mexico, Zacatecas 1546-1700, 1971.

Scurlock, Dan. From the Rio to the Sierra: An Environmental History of the Middle Rio Grande Basin, 1998; summarizes and quotes other studies.

Wikipedia. Details and dates of wars.

Table: Data from Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Mexico, Volume III, 1600-1803, 1883.

Bourbon Reforms

Philip V of Anjou assumed the throne of Spain in 1700 with ambitions to reform the state in the French image. Instead, his ascension provoked the War of Spanish Succession.

The peaceful interlude that followed the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht gave him an opportunity to implement Jean Orry’s recommendations for consolidating authority in a more unified state. He replaced councils dominated by the landed nobility with ministries modeled on a French cabinet loyal to the king.

The Consejo de Indias saw most of its functions transferred to the ministry of the Navy and Indies in 1714, which began issuing the royal cédulas in the king’s name. Among the powers it lost was oversight for appointments and incomes of religious leaders from archbishops down to the men serving in the provinces. The council continued the detailed work involved in processing judicial and ecclesiastical appointments, and retained its role as court of appeal.

Internally, Spain was divided into 21 provinces. In 1715, Philip revoked the traditional rights of the historic kingdoms and placed all but Navarre and Viscaya under the code of Castile.

While he was imposing some administrative uniformity onto a patchwork of privilege, other European monarchies became less stable. Anne, the last of the Protestant Stuarts ruling Great Britain, died in 1714. A distant German-speaking relative was enthroned simply because he was a Protestant descended from Anne’s great-uncle James I.

After Anne’s mother died, James II had married Mary of Modena. Catholics agitated for installing her son, James Francis Edward Stuart, instead. The 1707 Act of Union had had the same effect as Philip’s expansion of Castilian law: it had eroded the autonomy of large provinces. Scotland no longer had a separate monarch who just happened to be the same as the king or queen of England.

A year later, Louis XIV died, leaving his five-year-old great-great-grandson next in line. Orry’s successor, Giulio Alberoni, lobbied Philip V to stake his claim as closer through a secondary line, thus provoking war with France, Great Britain and Austria.

To finance the new conflict, Alberoni sought to eliminate custom barriers within the Iberian peninsula. He moved duty collection from the Ebro river to the Pyrenees in 1718. Thirty Basque towns rebelled.

Soon after, the French deployed the Duke of Berwick in northern Spain. Three Basque provinces, Gipuzkoa, Viscaya and Álava, volunteered to accept French rule if it would honor their fueros threatened by the laws of Castile.

Berwick in fact was James FitzJames, grandson of James II and his mistress, Arabella Churchill. His loyalties lay with the Spanish, where his son was Duque de Liria. He didn’t accept Basque submission and tended to release Spanish prisoners.

Cardinal Alberoni, whose loyalties lay with the pope, sent a flotilla from Cádiz to support Jacobites trying to elevate FitzJames’s half-uncle to the throne of Great Britain in March of 1719. In September, the British destroyed ports in Galicia and laid waste to the countryside.

George I’s loyalties lay with the Hanovers.

Philip dismissed Alberoni and restored liberties to the Basques, who had supported his claim to the Spanish crown. However, his actions did little to slow emigration from the northern provinces to Nueva España.

José Manuel Azcona noted, politics rarely were the reason young men left. Unlike traditional Castilian law that divided property among all legitimate heirs, Basque inheritance laws were designed to maintain the integrity of estates. Parents selected one child as their successor. The others were given cash or other gifts when they reached maturity.

There was little they could do with their bounties. Population densities were high while investment opportunities and jobs were few. The British had destroyed the restored shipyards.

Many in Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, Navarre and the Basque lands grew up hearing success tales relayed by earlier family migrants to the New World. Some went as soldiers or clergymen. Others, like the Bustamantes, Tagles, and Valverdes, went to towns where relatives already were living, especially the commercial hub of Mexico City that lay between the ports of Acapulco and Veracruz. Still others went to the mining towns.

El Real de Minas de San Francisco de Cuéllar was founded in 1709, and elevated into the villa of San Felipe el Real de Chihuahua in 1718. The next year most of the 44 merchants serving the miners were Basques.

Notes:
Azcona Pastor, José Manuel. Possible Paradises: Basque Emigration to Latin America, 2004.

Jones, Okayh L. Junior. Nueva Vizcaya, 1988.

Kamen, Henry. Philip V of Spain, 2001.

Kuethe, Allan J. and Kenneth J. Andrien. The Spanish Atlantic World in the Eighteenth Century, 2014.

Santa Cruz Leaders, 1733-1760

Red are the monarchs of Spain
Bold are the viceroys of New Spain
Regular type are the governors of New Mexico
Alcaldes and friars are listed at the bottom.

Bourbon Dynasty, Continues to 1746. Felipe V
Continues to 1734. Juan de Acuña, Marques de Casa Fuerte
Continues. Gervasio Cruzat y Góngora

1734-1740. Juan Antonio Vizarrón y Eguiarreta, Arzobispo de Mexico
Continues to 1736. Gervasio Cruzat y Góngora
1736-1738. Enrique de Olavide y Micheleña
1739-. Gaspar Domingo de Mendoza

1740-1741. Pedro de Castro y Figueroa, Duque de la Conquista y Marques de Gracia Real
Continues. Gaspar Domingo de Mendoza

1741-1742. Acting, Pedro Malo de Villaviencio
Continues. Gaspar Domingo de Mendoza

1742-1746. Pedro Cebrián y Agustín, Conde de Fuenclara
Continues to 1743. Gaspar Domingo de Mendoza
1743-. Joaquín Codallos y Rabal

Bourbon Dynasty, 1746-1759. Ferdinand VI
1746-1755. Francisco de Güemes y Horcasitas, Conde de Revillagigedo
Continues to 1749. Joaquín Codallos y Rabal
1749-1754. Tomás Vélez Cachupín
1754-. Francisco Antonio Marín del Valle

1755-1760. Agustín Ahumada y Villalón, Marques de las Amarillas
Continues. Francisco Antonio Marín del Valle

1760-1760. Acting, Francisco Antonio de Echávarri
Continues. Francisco Antonio Marín del Valle

Alcaldes in Santa Cruz
1735 Diego de Torres
1736 Juan Estevan García de Noriega
1737 Juan Estevan García de Noriega
1740 Juan Estevan García de Noriega
1746 Juan de Beytia
1748 Juan de Beytia, Juan José de Dios Sandoval Martínez
1749 Juan José Sandoval de Dios Sandoval Martínez
1750 Juan José Lobato, Juan José Sandoval de Dios Sandoval Martínez, Hilario de Archuleta
1751 Juan José Lobato, Juan José Sandoval de Dios Sandoval Martínez
1753 Juan José Lobato, Juan José Sandoval de Dios Sandoval Martínez
1754 Juan José Lobato
1759 Juan José Lobato

Friars at Santa Cruz
1735-1737 Juan José Pérez Mirabel (with breaks)
1737-1738 Miguel de Sopeña
1738-1741 José Irigoyen
1741-1760 Antonio Gabaldón (with breaks)

Friars at San Juan
1733-1746 Juan Sánchez de la Cruz
1747-1760 Juan José Pérez Mirabel

Friars at Santa Clara
1735-1736 Antonio Gabaldón
1737-1756 Miguel de Sopeña
1757-1760 Mariano Rodríguez de la Torre

Notes:
Viceroys from Wallace L. McKeehan, "Viceroys, Commandantes, Governors and Presidents," DeWitt Colony, Texas website.

Monarchs and governors from Wikipedia.

Alcaldes from Ralph Emerson Twitchell, Spanish Archives of New Mexico, volume 1, 1914; usually land transactions.

Friars from Angélico Chávez, Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, 1678-1900, 1957; drawn from signatures in the baptismal, marriage, and burial records. For some years, no one was resident, and many names appear as visiting friars who performed the sacraments. I’ve listed only those who seem to have served for at least one year.

Mal’ta

Will return to Santa Cruz between 1733 and 1760 on Thursday. Now, back to life in the old world.

Lake Baikal is a 5,390' deep rift valley between the Altai-Sayan mountains and the Baikal range near Russia’s boundary with Mongolia. Like the Río Grande, it began as a series of half grabens. Unlike our local valley, where the dropped block is still connected on one side, the Baikal rift evolved into full grabens.

The Selenga river feeds the lake from the southeast and the Angara drains it to the north. The latter flows through the basalt covered central Siberian Plateau. Because the earth’s crust is thinning along the rift, magma is close to the surface. Hot springs exist both under the lake and in the area.

About 53 miles north of Irkutsk on the left bank of an Angara tributary, bands settled at Mal’ta. A young boy’s skeleton from there has been dated to 24,000 years ago. That would have been during the last glacial maximum. Kelly Graf said areas to the north were unoccupied between 23,000 and 22,000 years ago.

They built several types of structures. Some were rectangular, roughly 10' x 13', with low walls made from stone slabs with mammoth and rhinoceros bones. The roofs likely were poles and skins reinforced by reindeer antlers. Some were larger with several hearths. Others were round, probably just poles, antlers and skins. The floors were 20 to 30 inches below ground. Mikhail Gerasimov thought the last were used in summer, the others in winter.

They probably hunted reindeer. Sergey Vasil’ev said there was no "unambiguous evidence for active mammoth hunting." Instead, they may have used traps. They did collect bones and tusks from places where animals had died in spring floods, fell through soft ice, or were mired by thawed ground.

They supplemented their diet with waterfowl. Nitrogen and oxygen isotopes in the bone collagen from that three- or four-year-old boy indicates 25% to 50% of his ingested protein came from freshwater prey.

On the right sides of the Mal’ta hearths, Gerasimov found stone knives and two-sided blades with bone daggers and carvings of birds made from ivory. The stylized renditions emphasized the necks. The wings were reduced in size.

On the other sides of the hearths, archaeologists found needles, awls, scrapers, knives and ivory necklaces. There also were statues of women that tended to be long and narrow, with tapered ends that could be stuck into the ground. Many depicted facial features and added female symbols, but the artists rarely emphasized body parts as had the Gravettians.

The hearths themselves were in holes with bottoms lined with limestone, perhaps to keep "the permafrost below from interfering with the fire." In structures with one fire, they were in the center.

One of the swan carvings was found in the grave of the young boy. He was buried under a stone slab, and covered with red ochre and charcoal. He was wearing a necklace with a central bird pendant, with three more pendants on each side, and spaced by 120 beads. There also were the remains of an infant added later, some stone tools, and a plaque with symbolic markings on one side. Three snakes resembling the birds’ necks were on the other.

The relationship between Mal’ta and the Gravettians may be more than cultural. In 2014, Eske Willerslev’s team published its analysis of DNA extracted from the boy’s upper arm bone. They found his mother’s contribution was shared with European hunters of the period. His male Y chromosome is found today in western Eurasians.

As a control, Willerslev’s group also analyzed DNA from another Siberian from 17,000 years ago. The remains from Afontova Gora had the same markers. The site was north along the Yenisei river before its junction with the Angara.

The connections between central Europe and settlements on the edge of the Eurasian plate may be difficult to establish. Much of the land between has been modified by thousands of years of weather. In addition, Russia still prevents western scientists from entering some areas.

Notes: The formation of the Río Grande valley from a series of half grabens was discussed in the post for 7 May 2015.

Delporte H. L’Image de la Femme dans l’Art Préhistorique, 1979, translated by Hitchcock, Don Hitchcock, "The Mal’ta - Buret’ Venuses and Culture in Siberia," Don's Maps website; quotation about hearths.

Gerasimov, Mikhail. Work discussed by Delporte.

Graf, Kelly E. "Modern Human Response to the Last Glacial Maximum in Siberia," in Yousuke Kaifu, et alia. Emergence and Diversity of Modern Human Behavior in Paleolithic Asia, 2015.

Richards, Michael P., Paul B. Pettitt, Mary C. Stiner, and Erik Trinkaus. "Stable Isotope Evidence for Increasing Dietary Breadth in the European Mid-upper Paleolithic," National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings 98:6528-6532:2001.

Vasil’ev, S. A. "Man and Mammoth in Pleistocene Siberia," The World of Elephants International Congress, 2001.

Willersle, Eske, Kelly E. Graf, Maanasa Raghavan, et alia. "Upper Palaeolithic Siberian Genome Reveals Dual Ancestry of Native Americans," Nature 505:87-91:2014.

Graphics:
1. Koba-Chan. "Physical Map of Northern Asia," uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, 26 May 2005.

2. Musser, Karl. "Map of Yenisei River Drainage Basin," uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, 15 September 2008.

Magdalenian Mythology

The magnificence of the ceiling at Altamira leaves you wanting to know more. It can’t have been meaningless. Artists took so much time honing their techniques and experimenting with pigments to create their effects. That was time granted them by others, a leave from hunting or knapping or preparing food.

Some who had read James Frazer’s The Golden Bough looked at the animals - the steppe bison, red deer and horses - and suggested the paintings were a form of magic executed to ensure a successful hunt.

That argument made more sense for the portable art, the points and artifacts that were carried from place to place. Earlier, the Solutreans had created beautiful, finely crafted laurel leafs to use against their prey. Magdalenian knappers produced more utilitarian stone work, but they incised their antler and bone tips with symbols.

When they depicted a species it was one that actually was hunted like a female red deer or hind. More than four times as many of the bones found at Altamira were from red deer as other species: 19 as opposed to four from horses and four from bison.

Others, familiar with the mythology of groups like the San Juan and Jicarilla Apache mentioned in the post for 23 April 2015, saw the special relationship with stone as evidence of attempts to contact spirits who dwelt below ground. Jean Clottes believed the process of creation was more important than the finished image.

That hypothesis better explained the hand stencils, the circles painted around holes in cave walls, and the simpler designs found in remote passages in caves.

Some went farther to suggest places like Altamira became communal centers were bands came together to share seasonal rituals, exchange goods, and find mates.

André Leroi-Gourhan looked at the composition of paintings in France and Spain, which he thought reflected social values with female animals in the center and males on the edges. Others have seen the 17 bison at Altamira as a herd of males and females joined for the rutting season. Two horses and two hinds were on the periphery.

Leslie Freeman tried to calculate the number of pounds of meat each species yielded. He believed a steppe bison might have produced 881 pounds, a horse 396, and a red deer 220.

It’s harder to convert those pounds into units of nutrition. The USDA provides information on modern animals, and not always on comparable classes. An ounce of ground raw bison provides 63 calories of energy and an ounce of ground raw deer 45. An ounce of raw deer meat, however, provides 34 calories and an ounce of raw horse 38.

For the equally important measure of protein per ounce, the USDA calculated ground raw bison provided 5.29 grams of protein compared to 6.16 from ground raw deer meat. Raw deer meat provided 6.51 grams and raw horse 6.06.

In cold years, the amount of fat was critical. USDA report probably underestimate the glacial period because animals are bred for leanness today. Still, bison would have been better. An ounce of raw ground meat contains 5.13 grams; the same cut of deer has 2.02. Raw deer has .69 grams per ounce and horse has 1.3.

Red deer may have provided fewer calories than the ones used by the USDA. Still, it seems, a pound of red deer was more nutritious than a pound of horse or steppe bison, but there were fewer pounds available per animal and it didn’t provide the same insulation against the cold. It took more hunting effort to provide the same amount of usable food. It may be one reason anthropologists believed Magdalenians developed mass hunting techniques for red deer.

What nutrition data really means was individuals who didn’t live through famine times had a better chance of reaching maturity and having excess energy to invest in activities that weren’t essential to physical survival.

One can dismiss the various explanations for the fluorescence in Magalenian art, but you’re still left with the basic evidence of symbolic language as well as verbal, of visual and intellectual imagination, of some form of a cosmology.

When I look at the herd of bison I think of a paradise lost, a mythic time remembered when animals were more plentiful and people didn’t eat so many mollusks. That implies not just an apprentice system for training knappers and artists, but story telling and history, a sense of past and present.

We associate such cognitive skills with modern Homo sapiens. They may well have existed among the Aurignicians and the Solutreans, but something in the experience of the Magdalenians 14,000 years ago stimulated them to express themselves in ways that left a record for us.

It may have been the sheer increase in population in a limited area with animals confined by climate that allowed such specialization among a small group.

When the climate warmed many plant and animal species migrated north. Their hunters followed. Art returned to daylight sites. The Magdalenian cultured ended 12,000 years ago.

Notes:
Bahn, Paul G. and Jean Vertut. Journey Through the Ice Age, 1997.

Clottes, Jen and David Lewis Williams. The Shamans of Prehistory, translated by Sophie Hawkes, 1998.

Conkey, Margaret W. "The Identification of Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherer Aggregation Sites: The Case of Altamira [and Comments and Reply]," Current Anthropology 21:609-630:1980.

Frazer, James George. The Golden Bough, first published in 1890, and expanded in later editions.

Freeman, L. G. "The Significance of Mammalian Faunas from Paleolithic Occupations in Cantabrian Spain," American Antiquity 38:3-44:1973.

Leroi-Gourhan, André. The Dawn of European Art, translated by Sara Champion, 1982; both Bahn and Clottes summarize his ideas.

United States Department of Agriculture. Agricultural Research Service. National Nutrient Database.

Graphics:
Utilisateur:120, "Great Hall of Policromes of Altamira," published by Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola in 1880, uploaded to Wikimedia Commons 14 March 2006.

Magdalenian at Altamira

Once plant and animal life recovered in a warming climate, the Homo sapiens population more than quadrupled in Europe. A new culture appeared in France and Spain about 17,000 years ago. Magdalenians’ shared technology and their iconographic system reflected "an underlying cultural unity" that suggested "the circulation of traditions on a vast scale in time and space."

Their symbols appeared on both portable and immovable objects. Most sites had one or the other. Altamira, 20 miles west of Santander, was one of the few in Cantabria with both. It was also one of the few caves with both art and evidence of habitation.

Margaret Conkey noted 27 places in northern Iberia engraved bone or antler. Many adorned tools or points. Altamira was one of five where more than 10 artifacts have been found. Those five shared six design elements organized by one of three structural principles. Only two had unique motifs: Altamira and Cueto de la Mina. She believed that marked them as centers of innovation where groups may have gathered.

The earliest sign on a wall at Altamira was some black marks that have been dated to 16,480 years ago. A turtle-like profile or tectiform goes back 15,400 years. Both were found in a terminal gallery.

Another form of portable art was carved or painted limestone tablets or non-utilitarian bones. At Altamira and El Castillo left engraved heads of female red deer on both shoulder blades and walls. The shoulder blade at Altamira has been dated to 14,480 years ago. Paul Bahn and Jean Vetut believed the two incised bones were either the work of "the same person, or two who knew each other’s work." One had either seen the other’s work, or been trained by someone trained in much the way workshops or studios functioned in later European art.

The progression from artisans working independently within a shared tradition to artists working within a school is more obvious in the images left on cave walls. Early in the period, images were executed near the mouths of caves, sometimes just beyond the farthest point reached by daylight. At Altamira, the opening was the only area with hearths.

Jean Clotttes noted there came a time in the mid-Magdalenian period when people explored caves. They may have been aided by improvements in their stone lamps that burned animal fat. Art began appearing in large internal caverns and in remote passages assessable by few.

At Altamira an 60 by 30 foot ceiling was painted in stages on an area The height of the chamber varied from 3.8 to 8.7 feet. One large bison was added 14,820 years ago, another twenty years later. A small bison was painted 13,570 years ago. They first were engraved on the wall, then outlined in back. The bodies were colored in shades of red and brown. The same techniques appeared earlier at Lascaux, in the French Dordogne, and later at El Castillo.

Clottes noted, when archaeologists tried to replicate their techniques, they discovered it was difficult to find walls that met their requirements. They needed to be large and smooth and relatively unmarred by calcite dripping from the ceiling.

Artists incorporated irregularities in the walls into their art. Nodules and depressions were exploited to give dimension to animals. At Altamira, Bahn and Vetut noted, all the bison on the ceiling were on convex surfaces, while the horses and deer were on concave. Rough textures also were incorporated into the bison.

The sensitivity to the contours of walls may have been more than an aesthetic sensibility. It may have been a consequence of special attitudes towards rock that had manifested themselves in the Aurignacian with hand stencils. Such stencils continued to be made at Altamira, along with hand prints.

Most of the pigments were mineral based. Ochre was still the primary colorant, used for reds and browns. Chemists have determined artists experimented to discover the best source for black. At Altamira they used two types of manganese, pine or juniper charcoal, and charred remains of burned bone. Anthropologists found some white paste in a shell made from mica and illite.

Some pigments were used in sticks and some were powdered. The latter may have been turned into paste. André Leroi-Gourhan said, experiments showed water was the most effective binder, either in the pastes or in the dampness of the walls. Cave water would have been rich in calcium. At Altamira, powdered fossil amber was used.

Notes: For more on population numbers see post for 22 November 2015. All dates are given by scientists with ranges; I’ve simplified them here.

Bahn, Paul G. and Jean Vertut. Journey Through the Ice Age, 1997. He gives the following dates for the bison at El Castillo: 13,570, 13,060, and 12,910 years ago.

Clottes, Jen and David Lewis Williams. The Shamans of Prehistory, translated by Sophie Hawkes, 1998.

Conkey, Margaret W. "The Identification of Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherer Aggregation Sites: The Case of Altamira [and Comments and Reply]," Current Anthropology 21:609-630:1980. The other Cantabrian sites she used were El Cierro, El Juyo, and La Paloma.

Leroi-Gourhan, André. The Dawn of European Art, translated by Sara Champion, 1982; quotation in the first paragraph.

Graphics: Rameessos, "Reproduction of a Bison of the Cave of Altamira," uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, 25 December 2008.

Solutrean in Cantabria

Scientists now think the great ice ages of the past were caused by regular modifications in the location of the Earth’s elliptical orbit and one resulted in less summer solar radiation in the northern latitudes around 23,000 years ago. That in turn lead to progressively less ice being melted each year, which in turn nurtured the expansion of ice sheets.

The northern ice sheets began shrinking about 19,000 years ago when changes in the sun’s angles led to more heat in the summer. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet was affected between 14,000 and 15,000 years ago. Both led to increases in sea levels. The middle and late Solutrean fell between these two events.

Ironically, the first warming in France and Iberia led to worse conditions. If you think back to the changes in the Nebraska prairies in the 1930s, mentioned in the post for 28 January 2016, you realize that when the rains returned in 1938, bluestem could reclaim land on its western frontier lost to western wheatgrass. Wheatgrass, however, could not compensate for its lost range by returning farther west because that area had been devastated.

Similarly, the ranges of grasses that fed reindeer, horses and red deer would have changed, and likely shrunk. The humans dependent on them would have had to adapt to fewer or smaller animals.

Bands apparently moved south along the coastal plain of the Bay of Biscay bypassing the Pyrenees to the east. The lightest area in the map below would have been exposed. The large estuary up the French coast is the mouth of the Garonne river. Many of the early Solutrean sites are in its upstream valleys.

In Cantabria, the earliest evidence from El Mirón has been dated 19,230 years ago. It was located on the Río Asón between Balboa and Santander, in the second indentation from the east on the map. The earliest Solutrean date for La Riera was 19,820 years ago. It sat on the limestone La Llera ridge between Santander and Oviedo, somewhere in the shallow indentation, about 70 miles west of El Mirón.

Steven Mithen said La Riera was a treeless landscape where bands hunted red deer and ibex. Lawrence Straus was told the only tree growing at El Mirón was Scots pine. The most common herbaceous plants were in the wild lettuce group of the composite family. He argued, that with the increasing population in the area, bands began foraging for mollusks along the shore in winter.

The climate improved at bit by 18,890 years ago, when birch trees and members of the heath family appeared at El Mirón. The newer Solutrean tool forms were found for the first time: an antler sagaie and two unifacial points with possible shoulders. The next layer higher had a bifacial willow leaf. The antler throwing spear was "‘decorated’ with parallel, oblique engraved lines."

Some semblance of social life returned by 17,420 years ago. La Cueva de Chufín saw its cave art revived. Earlier artists had made red outlines of figures and dots. Now, they left engravings of deer, bison, aurochs, and horses with more abstract patterns.

Although portable art like the incised spear was more common in the Solutrean period than cave art, someone engraved a deer on a wall at Altamira around 18,000 years ago. Later, people left hand prints and simple outlines of horses and goats. Francisco Jordá Cerdá documented Cueva de La Pasiega where he saw outlines and figures painted in red. Archaeologists found 25 painted figures at El Castillo.

Straus believed bands spent most of their time in coastal sites that were close to sources for shellfish and fish. The caves were all in sheltered locations, with their entrances alee to the winds.

From their coastal locations, Straus argued, groups moved up adjacent river valleys to hunting areas that often overlooked "gorges, passes, box canyons" used by animals moving between high and low pastures. These high hunting locations were often so windy and uncomfortable they wouldn’t have been used for long time periods.

Straus thought pairs of coastal and montane sites represented group territories, and that each was associated with a ritual center. Near the coast, La Cueva de Chufín was east of La Riera. Altamira and El Castillo were both about 30 miles west of Santander on neighboring rivers. Cueva de La Pasiega was upriver from El Castillo.

Notes: The wild lettuce group is the liguliflora section of Composite family. Paleobotanists often can’t distinguish pollens and other plant remains below groups levels.

Bahn, Paul G. and Jean Vertut. Journey Through the Ice Age, 1997; on Altamira paintings and El Castillo.

Clark, Peter U., et alia. "The Last Glacial Maximum," Science 325:710-714:2009.

Gálvez Lavín, Nerea. "Chufín (Riclones, Rionansa)," Universidad de Cantabria Arte en Cantabria web site

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Graphics: Eric Gaba, English translation of "Carte Bathymétrique de la Mer Celtique et du Golfe de Gascogne," uploaded to Wikimedia Commons 1 July 2014.