Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola

Don Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola (1831-1888): Spanish jurist and amateur archaeologist, who owned the land where the Altamira cave was found. The cave, now famous for its unique collection of prehistoric art, was well known to local people, but had not been given much attention until in 1868 it was "discovered" by the hunter Modesto Peres. Sautuola then started exploring the caves in 1875. He did however not become aware of the paintings until 1879, when his daughter Maria, five years old at the time, incidentally noticed that the ceiling was covered by images of bisons. Sautuola, having seen similar images engraved on paleolithic objects displayed at the World Exposition in Paris the year before, rightly assumed that also the paintings might be dating from the stone-age. He therefore engaged an archaeologist from the University of Madrid to help him in his further work. Professor Juan Vilanova y Piera supported Sautuola's assumptions, and they published their results in 1880, to much public acclaim. But the scientific society was reluctant to accept the presumed antiquity of the paintings. The French specialists, led by their guru Gabriel de Mortillet, were particularly adamant in rejecting the hypothesis of Sautuola and Piera. Their findings were loudly ridiculed at the 1880 Prehistorical Congress in Lisbon. And due to the supreme artistic quality, and the exceptional state of conservation of the paintings, Sautuola was even accused of forgery. A fellow countryman maintained that the paintings had been produced by a contemporary artist, on Sautuola's orders. It was not until 1902, when several other findings of prehistoric paintings had served to render the hypothesis of the extreme antiquity of the Altamira-paintings less offensive, that the scientific society retracted their opposition to the Spaniards. That year the towering French archaeologist Emile Cartailhac, who had been one of the leading critics, emphatically admitted his mistake in the famous article, "Mea culpa d'une sceptique", published in the journal L'Anthroplogie. Sautuola, having died 14 years earlier, did not live to enjoy the restitution of his honour, nor the later scientific confirmation of his premonitions. Modern dating techniques have since confirmed that the paintings of the Altamira cave were created over extended periods between 11,000 and 19,000 years ago. For the study of paleolithic art Sautuola's discoverings must now be considered absolutely pivotal.

Sautuola's daughter later married within the Botín family of Cantabrian bourgeoisie. The current owners of Banco Santander Central Hispano are Sautuola's descendants.