Cave of Los Aviones
cave and prehistoric archaeological site in Spain
The Cave of Los Aviones, located at sea level near Cartagena in southeastern Spain, is a paleontology site dating back to the Middle Paleolithic era. It is famous for having yielded in 2010 several perforated and painted seashell beads thought to have been crafted as jewelry by Neanderthals.
The cave is a cemented marine conglomerate. The site has yielded ochred and perforated marine shells, red and yellow colorants, and shell containers that feature residues of complex pigment mixtures. The pigments on the sea shells were dated to 115,000 years old, making these "the oldest personal ornamentation known anywhere in the world," predating Homo sapiens. Art is an archaeological proxy for symbolic behavior.
The public source identifies “Cave of Los Aviones” as cave and prehistoric archaeological site in Spain. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Cave, Aviones and cave.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1143227. Authority coordinates are 37.585, -0.986. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cave of Los Aviones” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.