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22,000BCc. 22,000–10,000 BC · Vila Nova de Foz Côa

Côa Valley rock art

Engraved outlines of a horse and an aurochs overlapping on a schist rock face in the Côa Valley
Photo: Nmmacedo. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Along the gorge of the Côa river, Ice Age hunters pecked and scratched thousands of figures of horses, aurochs and ibex into open-air rock panels. The engravings became widely known in the early 1990s, when a dam under construction would have flooded them; public protest helped halt it in 1995, and the valley became a World Heritage site in 1998.

Sites

  1. Site 1: Côa MuseumA museum built into the slope above where the Côa meets the Douro.Map ↗
  2. Site 2: Penascosa rock art siteEngraved panels by the river, seen on visits led by the park's guides.Map ↗

Guides who take you there

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More from the Prehistory

Read more: reference. Summary written by History-Tours.com.