Pre-history on wall
'Sistine Chapel' of Caves
The artwork already has suffered from exposure to the public, and the cave has been closed to tourists since 2002, when light-loving microorganisms were found living on the paintings. [See the Altamira cave paintings] In August 2010, Spain's Ministry of Culture announced plans to reopen the cave, pending decisions by a panel of experts about how many visitors would be allowed inside each year. But according to the Spanish researchers, reopening could be a death knell for the art. A history of degradation The drawings were first discovered in 1879 by the 9-year-old daughter of an amateur archaeologist, Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola. It would take more than two decades for the scientific community to accept the Paleolithic art as genuine, but by 1955, the cave was receiving around 50,000 visitors each year, according to the National Museum of Altamira. In 1973, some 174,000 people tramped through to see the paintings.
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