In the Coto Correa site, located in Las Chapas, a team of experts identified a stone block with engravings that could be over 200,000 years old.
This discovery promoted by the Department of Culture, Education, and Historical Heritage, adds to a series of previous discoveries that confirm the archaeological richness of the area.
Coto Correa is a site of great interest to the scientific community, as it contains remains of the earliest populations that inhabited the region. This site has archaeological protection since the 1950s, when lithic tools dated to the Lower Paleolithic period were accidentally discovered.
The recent excavation in the area has provided greater insight into the geological evolution of the terrain and has brought to light a set of stone tools in one of its deepest layers.
The most significant discovery is a gabbro block with linear engravings, making it an exceptional piece within prehistoric studies, it confirms the presence of humans in Marbella during the Early Middle Paleolithic, a period scarcely documented in Spain and unprecedented in the province of Málaga.
The stone with human-made graphic representations could predate the oldest known cave art by more than 100,000 years, making it one of the earliest known examples of human symbolic expression.
Main Image: Credit: Ayuntamiento de Marbella