The Magura Cave (Bulgarian "пещера Магура") is located in north-western Bulgaria close to the village of

Rabisha Rabisha ( bg, Рабиша ) is a village in north-western Bulgaria, in Vidin Province and Belogradchik municipality. Geography Rabisha village is located 45 kilometers from Vidin and 20 km from Belogradchik. It is also located on Archa ...

, from the town of

Belogradchik Belogradchik ( bg, Белоградчик ) is a town in Vidin Province, Northwestern Bulgaria, the administrative centre of the homonymous Belogradchik Municipality. The town, whose name literally means "small white town," is situated in the foo ...

Vidin Province Vidin Province () is the northwesternmost province of Bulgaria. It borders Serbia to the west and Romania to the northeast. Its administrative centre is the city of Vidin on the Danube river. The area is divided into 11 municipalities. As of De ...

. The prehistoric wall paintings of Magura have great resemblance with those of the Grotta dei Cervi in Italy, which are of exceptional expression and artistic depth and are considered the most significant works of art of the European Post-

Paleolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...

era. Guided visits are conducted by the staff of

municipality, to which the management of the cave was transferred in 2012 by the Bulgarian Council of Ministers. In 1984 the site was inducted into

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...

's tentative list of World Heritage.

Description

The total length of the 15 million year old cave is . The average annual temperature of the cave is , except for one room where the temperature is always . The air humidity reaches 80% and the displacement - . The Magura cave was formed in the limestone Rabisha Hill ( above sea level). The morphology of the cave consists of one main gallery with six various-sized halls and three lateral galleries around it. The main gallery is composed of six chambers, variously sized; the largest one, the so-called ''Arc Hall'', is long, wide and high, including impressive natural vaults,

speleothems A speleothem (; ) is a geological formation by mineral deposition (geology), deposits that accumulate over time in natural caves. Speleothems most commonly form in calcareous caves due to carbonate dissolution reactions. They can take a variety ...

, spectacular stalactites and

stalagmites A stalagmite (, ; from the Greek , from , "dropping, trickling") is a type of rock formation that rises from the floor of a cave due to the accumulation of material deposited on the floor from ceiling drippings. Stalagmites are typically ...

, named ''The Poplar'', ''The Pipe Organ'', ''The Oriental City'' and ''The Cactus''. The very spacious site also allows for music concerts to be held during

Christmas Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by country, around t ...

and

Easter Easter,Traditional names for the feast in English are "Easter Day", as in the '' Book of Common Prayer''; "Easter Sunday", used by James Ussher''The Whole Works of the Most Rev. James Ussher, Volume 4'') and Samuel Pepys''The Diary of Samuel ...

Fauna

Bones from prehistoric species like

cave bear The cave bear (''Ursus spelaeus'') is a prehistoric species of bear that lived in Europe and Asia during the Pleistocene and became extinct about 24,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum. Both the word "cave" and the scientific name ' ...

, cave hyena,

fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelve sp ...

wolf The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, and gray wolves, as popularly u ...

wild cat Felidae () is the family of mammals in the order Carnivora colloquially referred to as cats, and constitutes a clade. A member of this family is also called a felid (). The term "cat" refers both to felids in general and specifically to the dom ...

and

otter Otters are carnivorous mammals in the subfamily Lutrinae. The 13 extant otter species are all semiaquatic, aquatic, or marine, with diets based on fish and invertebrates. Lutrinae is a branch of the Mustelidae family, which also includes wea ...

have been discovered in the Magura Cave. Today, constant inhabitants of the cave is the

collembola Springtails (Collembola) form the largest of the three lineages of modern hexapods that are no longer considered insects (the other two are the Protura and Diplura). Although the three orders are sometimes grouped together in a class called Ento ...

, as well as four types of bats (greater and lesser horseshoe bat, greater mouse-eared bat and Schreibers's bat or also called

common bent-wing bat The common bent-wing bat (''Miniopterus schreibersii''), also known as the Schreibers's long-fingered bat or Schreibers's bat, is a species of insectivorous bat. They appear to have dispersed from a subtropical origin and distributed throughout ...

Paintings

Cave painting In archaeology, Cave paintings are a type of parietal art (which category also includes petroglyphs, or engravings), found on the wall or ceilings of caves. The term usually implies prehistoric origin, and the oldest known are more than 40,000 ye ...

s dating from the

Epipaleolithic In archaeology, the Epipalaeolithic or Epipaleolithic (sometimes Epi-paleolithic etc.) is a period occurring between the Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic during the Stone Age. Mesolithic also falls between these two periods, and the two are someti ...

, late

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...

Eneolithic The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often v ...

and early

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...

decorate some of the cave's walls. The paintings have been estimated to be made between 10.000 and 8.000 years ago. The drawings represent important events of the society that had occupied the Magura Cave: religious ceremonies, hunting scenes and depictions of deities which are unique on the

Balkan peninsula The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the who ...

. The ''Fertility Dance'' and the ''Hunting Ceremony'' rank among the most noteworthy paintings. One grouping from the Bronze Age has been interpreted as a

solar calendar A solar calendar is a calendar whose dates indicate the season or almost equivalently the apparent position of the Sun relative to the stars. The Gregorian calendar, widely accepted as a standard in the world, is an example of a solar calendar. T ...

. According to Alexey Stoev and Penka Vlaykova Stoeva Bronze Age "paintings of staggered black and white squares used to count the days in the calendar month permit to describe fairly accurately the number of days in the solar

tropical year A tropical year or solar year (or tropical period) is the time that the Sun takes to return to the same position in the sky of a celestial body of the Solar System such as the Earth, completing a full cycle of seasons; for example, the time f ...

(Stoev and Muglova 1999). The cave paintings allowed storing information about regional solar calendar, customs, religious festivals, and rituals of the society the earliest such representation yet discovered in Europe." Contemporary imitations of possible

fertility rite Fertility rites or fertility cult are religious rituals that are intended to stimulate reproduction in humans or in the natural world. Such rites may involve the sacrifice of "a primal animal, which must be sacrificed in the cause of fertility or ...

s are reported — inscriptions in Latin and paintings made by treasure-hunters. The medium used to create the art was

bat guano Guano (Spanish from qu, wanu) is the accumulated excrement of seabirds or bats. As a manure, guano is a highly effective fertilizer due to the high content of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium, all key nutrients essential for plant growth. ...

. More than 750 images have been identified. Painted signs can be organised into four thematic groups:

anthropomorphic Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics t ...

zoomorphic The word ''zoomorphism'' derives from the Greek ζωον (''zōon''), meaning "animal", and μορφη (''morphē''), meaning "shape" or "form". In the context of art, zoomorphism could describe art that imagines humans as non-human animals. It c ...

, geometric, and symbolic (astronomic?) figures. For the first group, there are bitriangular silhouettes with raised rounded arms (females with a sort of a waist bow, males with legs and sex like a trident, sometimes stylised like a "bottle opener"),

archer Archery is the sport, practice, or skill of using a bow to shoot arrows.Paterson ''Encyclopaedia of Archery'' p. 17 The word comes from the Latin ''arcus'', meaning bow. Historically, archery has been used for hunting and combat. In m ...

s, ithyphallic figures, copula, linear schematic anthropomorphic figures with raised arms (sometimes like dancing) and "fungiforms". Regarding zoomorphic items, there are caprids,

bovid The Bovidae comprise the biological family of cloven-hoofed, ruminant mammals that includes cattle, bison, buffalo, antelopes, and caprines. A member of this family is called a bovid. With 143 extant species and 300 known extinct species, ...

s, dogs, "ostrich-like" animals (big birds) and schematic linear quadrupeds. Geometric signs show T-shaped figures, vertical parallel lines, horizontal zigzags, vertical parallel zigzags, branch-like or tree-like figures, chessboard patterns, rhombi, horizontal stair-like patterns, crossed networks, honeycomb networks and crossed circles. Few rayed circle figures, mainly the two unica of the so-called calendar scene, likely represent a sun depiction. Taking count of some associated figures, it is possible to recognize dancing, hunting, and mating scenes. In the so-called Cult Hall a large horizontal dance and hunting scene is depicted, arranged in two main rows: these are the best known and most reproduced Magura Cave images. Access to the area of the paintings is restricted in an effort to preserve them. Before 1993, the cave wasn't protected and there was free access to all. For this reason, some of the drawings have been vandalised and there are scratches on the walls. The cave is now open to the public all year round although the drawings can be seen only with the presence of a tour guide and the payment of a fee.

References

External links

The Magura Cave
at tourism site Bulgariatravel.org
Pictures from the Magura Cave

Bulgarian rock art: the Magura Cave paintings
paper on TRACCE Online Rock Art Bulletin
Magura Cave photo gallery
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