Araña Cave (Bicorp)

The cave paintings in Araña Cave (dating from between 9000 and 1400 BC) are part of the Levantine Cave Art that was awarded World Heritage status in 1998 by UNESCO. It contains one of the world’s most famous depictions, the honey-gatherer.

The Araña Cave is home to one of the most important scenes in Levantine cave art, the honey-gatherer. We can see not just this very characteristic painting, as in this cave we find two panels full of paintings, where we can view different hunting scenes and animals. It can all be visited with a guide by booking beforehand at the Ecomuseo Bicorp.

The caves were discovered in 1920 by J. Poch and studied that same year by Eduardo Hernández Pacheco. His complete study was published in 1924 in the reports of the Committee of Paleontological and Prehistoric Studies belonging to the Madrid Museum of Natural Science.

There are two cavities that contain the cave paintings, however the largest one is divided into two parts (Cave 1 and Cave 2) and the other is described as Cave 3. In Cave 1 an archer and a deer can be identified on the left, a roe deer on the right and another human figure between two archers. In Cave 2 (the largest cave and the one with the most paintings) you can admire the famous honey-gatherer scene, in which a woman can be seen hanging from ropes with a basket on her back, she is putting her arm into a beehive, while the bees fly around her. And in cave number 3 a large bull can clearly be seen, as well as several goats.