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Kapova Cave

Kapova Cave is a famous Russian Palaeolithic cave. It has painted mammoths, rhinos, horses and a bison on its walls. They were dated by O. N. Bader as being from the end of the Upper Palaeolithic. The cave has two levels, the paintings are mainly in the upper level at some distance from the entrance. This fact is typical for palaeolithic paintings and a source for speculation about the meaning of the paintings. Excavations revealed a layer with human remains, debris from the wall paintings, animal bones and charcoal. The charcoal was dated with the¹⁴C method to be 14 680 ±150 years old. Among the animal bones were cave bear bones. Kapova Cave is a complex natural monument with multiple grottos and halls connected by passages on various levels. The walls of the cave are rich in calcite deposits of all kinds of forms and sizes. An underground river flows out of the cave and forms the Blue Lake at its entrance. It is named after the blue colour of the water, caused by the high amount of lime in the water, which is best seen on sunny days around midday, when sunlight shines into the cave and on the lake.

Photo: Horse, Kapova Cave,Abramov et al. (1984)
Text above adapted from http://www.showcaves.com/english/ru/caves/Kapova.html

This is the sharp bend of the Belaya River in the Shulgan-Tash nature reserve, near where Kapova Cave is situated.

Photo: drews via Panoramio.

Kapova Cave marked with its latitude and longitude on the Belaya River in the Shulgan-Tash nature reserve.

Photo: Google Earth

Distribution of mobile art in Eastern Europe.

1 Staryé Duruitory, 2 Brynzeny, 3 Kosseoutzy, 4 Klimaoutzy, 5 Suren' 1, 6 Chan-Koba, 7 Apiantcha, 8 grotte d'Uvarov, 9 Sakagia, 10 Sagvardgilé, 11 Gvardgilas-Kldé, 12 Devis-Khvreli, 13 Taro-Kldé, 14 Molodova V, 15 Lissitchniki, 16 Lipa VI, 17 Klinetz, 18 Ossokorovka, 19 Dubovaya Balka, 20 Kaïstrovaya Balka, 21 Mejiritch (Mezhirich), 22 Kievo-Kirillovskaya, 23 Mézine (Mezin), 24 Novgorod Severskyi, 25 Puchkari I, 26 Dobranitchevka, 27 Gontzy, 28, Rogalik, 29 Amvrossievka, 30 Eliseevitchi I, 31 Eliseevitchi II, 32 Yudinovo, 33 Khoylevo II, 34 Timonovka, 35 Suponevo, 36 Avdeevo, 37 Sungir', 38 Gagarino, 39 Kostienki 19, 40 Kostienki 21, 41 Kostienki 13, 42 Kostienki 1, 43 Kostienki 14, 44 Kostienki 12, 45 Kostienki 17, 46 Kostienki 2, 47 Kostienki 11, 48 Kostienki 4, 49 Kostienki 15, 50 Kostienki 9, 51 Kostienki 8, 52 Borchtchevo 1, 53 Borchtchevo 2, 54 Ilskaya, 55 Murakovka, 56 Ostrovskaya, 57 Bez'imyannyi, 58 Smelobskaya, 59 Kapova, 60 Ignatievskaya.

Photo:Abramova (1995)

Kapova Cave entrance.

Photo: Ivan Shkalikov via Panoramio.

Kapova Cave entrance.

Photo: Courtesy of Dr Pavel Kusnetsov and Gail Brownrigg

Kapova Cave plan.

Plan of the Shulgan-Tash (Kapova) cave without the New Section with diagrams of the main clusters of drawings. The red dots indicate the locations of the engravings: 1 — composition No. 1 in the Main Gallery; 2 — composition No. 2 in the Dome Hall.

Based on: plan byLyakhnitsky et al. (2013) with the author’s addition.

Proximal source:Kotov (2023)

Important recent discoveries

Alexey Solodey writes, 2019.08.23:

I am glad to inform you that this summer in Kapova cave we found a new complex of images, which are engraved on the ceiling of low passage right before the Hall of Kupol, the first decorated hall of the ground floor of the cave. Now it is the second decorated one. On a region of approximately 10x15 metres we found about 30 panels with at least 50 depictions of animals. Most of the images were made with bare fingers in the soft substratum on the ceiling (we call that technique 'macaronis'), with artistically used natural forms of the relief of the rock – natural or corrected by humans. The height of the ceiling is circa from 1 to 3 m. Most of the images represent heads of an animal. Dimensions of the heads are circa from 20 to 60 cm. There are heads of horses, bear, deer, aurochs and possibly other animals. There are some full corpora depicted also: all of the mammoths (from 5 to 8 in number), two or three aurochs and several horses. There are images made with other techniques also: thin engravings, and black painting.

Due to the discovery we now have a completely different portrait of Kapova as a rock art site. Firstly, we have increased the number of images, and it is particularly important that they can be interpreted, for we know that no more than a quarter of known images in the cave could be 'read' before. And we have some new species in the art of Kapova now. Secondly, we have a new technique, which was known only in 'very Palaeolithic' sites in France and Spain before, as Pech Merle, Bara-Bahau, Chauvet etc. Then, we have some keys to other images in Kapova, which we had counted before as 'unreadable'.

A particular characteristic of the complex is that you cannot document it with using of any of the contact methods: the surface seems to be soft still. And more, even some of our non-contact approaches and methods have been improved dramatically: it is mostly about the technique of illuminating when documenting.

Some traces are patinised well. I think that we have up to four types of traces in context of colour differences and up to four types of differences in coating upon the traces. Some of the traces look quite freshly-made, though I think this is just a first impression which remains to be accurately proved.

Most of the animals have eyes. Very beautiful eyes sometimes, some of which have reminded us of examples from Font-de-Gaume, Niuax or Rouffignac. We don’t have anything comparable in the art of the Bronze or Iron Ages, as far as I can see. Sometimes they used a natural part of the substrate to be an eye, sometimes they made the eye with finger-engraving.

I attached two of the images, which 'agreed to be pictured', for most of them this is very hard to do. The first one we named 'The bear', pay attention that there are several heads made one inside the other, and the biggest one is the zoomorphic natural form: kind of Matrjoshka style, so to speak. I also attach a tracing of 'The goat', as we named it, though firstly it was a wolf, as I can remember, then it became a goat, and finally it seems to be a deer due to horns, which are now traced badly and hard to see in the photo. It is the result of two shooting attempts and two tracing attempts of the images of 'The goat' panel, and it is not the last. All the images of the complex are to be carefully traced digitally, but it’ll take some time.

So, come and see it for yourself. For us it was a miracle, and it remains so.

'The Bear', macaroni style.

Photo: Alexey Solodey, 2019

'The Goat', macaroni style, and a digital tracing of the artwork.

Photo: Alexey Solodey, 2019

Kapova Horses.

Photo:Scelinskij and Sirokov (1999)

Proximal Source: http://www.ceara.ru/

Проксимальный источник: http://www.ceara.ru/

Mammoth, Kapova Cave.

Photo:Abramov et al. (1984)

Kapova Cave Blue Lake, the lime in the water making the lake blue when the sun shines on it.

Photo: Ivan Shkalikov via Panoramio.

Mammoth, Kapova Cave.

Photo:Abramov et al. (1984)

Kapova Cave, paintings of mammoths.

Photo: Ivan Shkalikov via Panoramio.

Horse, mammoth and rhinoceros painted in red in Kapova cave.

Photo: http://www.arretetonchar.fr/

Horse, mammoth and rhinoceros painted in red in Kapova cave.

Photo: Courtesy of Dr Pavel Kusnetsov and Gail Brownrigg

Closeup of the horse in the image above.

Photo: Courtesy of Dr Pavel Kusnetsov and Gail Brownrigg

Kapova Cave, paintings of mammoths, a horse, and a rhinoceros.

Photo: Ivan Shkalikov via Panoramio.

Photo taken in Burzyanskiy, Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia

Another version of the panel above.Photo: SaganZ
Permission: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Source: Wikipedia

Wooly Rhinoceros, Kapova Cave.

Photo:Abramov et al. (1984)

Horse, Kapova Cave.

Photo:Abramov et al. (1984)

Horse, camel(?), and signs.

Photo: Vladislav Zhitenev/Lomonosov Moscow State University
Proximal source: https://phys.org/news/2017-11-scientists-upper-paleolithic-cave-camel.html

This is the setting for the panel above.

Photo: Alexey Solodeynikov
Source: http://www.ceara.ru/

Double humped camel, Kapova Cave. An ancient image of a two-humped camel has been discovered in the Kapova cave (Southern Urals). The age of the painting is preliminarily estimated to be between 14 500 and 37 700 BP, a time when there were no camels in the Southern Urals. This discovery confirms researchers' belief that artists in the Upper Paleolithic could migrate over long distances.

The image of a camel's shape is painted in red ochre and partially outlined with charcoal. This unique discovery was made by Eudald Guillamet, a well-known restorative specialist from Andorra, who was invited by the State Office of Protection of Cultural Heritage of Bashkiria to clean the cave of graffiti.

'This painting, cleared on the polychrome panel 'Horses and Signs', which has been well-known since the late 1970s, has no analogues in the art complexes of the caves of France and Spain, but does have some resemblance to the camel painting from the Ignatievskaya cave. Now it will probably become a significant image in the Upper Paleolithic cave bestiary of the Southern Urals,' says V.S. Zhitenev, head of Moscow State University's South Ural archeological expedition and leading researcher for the Kapova and Ignatievskaya caves.

Photo (left): Vladislav Zhitenev/Lomonosov Moscow State University
Proximal source: MSU Press Service

Photo (right): look4ward.uk.co, public domain
Proximal source: http://rockartblog.blogspot.com.au/

Text: https://phys.org/news/2017-11-scientists-upper-paleolithic-cave-camel.html

References
Abramov A., Anikovich M., Bader N., Boriskovsky P., Lubin V., Praslin N., Rogachev A., А. АБРАМОВА, М. В. АНИКОВИЧ, Н. О. БАДЕР, П. И. БОРИСКОВСКИЙ, В. П. ЛЮБИН, Н. Д. ПРАСЛОВ, А. Н. РОГАЧЕВ, 1984:Archaeology of the USSR. 1984, Nauka, Moscow, 1984
Abramova Z., 1995:L'Art paléolithique d'Europe orientale et de Sibérie., Grenoble: Jérôme Millon.
Kotov V.G., 2023: Engraved images of the Shulgan-Tash (kapvoy) cave, Bashkortostan, Southern Urals,Bulletin of Archaeology, Anthropology and Ethnography, https://doi.org/10.20874/2071-0437-2023-61-2-1
Clottes J., 2003:Chauvet Cave: The Art of Earliest Times, University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, 2003
Lyakhnitsky Yu.S., Minnikov O.A., Yushko A.A., 2013: Drawings and signs of Shulgantash cave (Kapovoy): Catalogue images Ufa, Kitap , 2013, 288 pp.
Scelinskij E., Sirokov V., 1999:Höhlenmalerei im Ural, (Cave painting in the Urals - Kapova and Ignatievka), transl. G. Bosinski, Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Sigmaringen, 1999

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Some people have expressed interest in knowing a little bit about me. For those people, here is a potted biography:

I live in New South Wales, Australia, and I am a retired high school mathematics/science teacher.

The Donsmaps site is totally independent of any other influence. I work on it for my own pleasure, and finance it myself. I started before there was an internet, when I thought I could do a better job of the small map on the end papers of Jean Auel's wonderful book, Valley of the Horses, by adding detail and contour lines, and making a larger version. I have always loved maps since I was a young boy.

I had just bought a black and white 'fat Mac' with a whopping 512 kB of memory (!), and no hard disk. With a program called 'Super Paint' and a lot of double work (hand tracing first the maps of Europe from atlases, then scanning the images on the tracing paper, then merging the scanned images together, then tracing these digital scans on the computer screen), I made my own black and white map.

Then the internet came along, the terms of my internet access gave me space for a small website, and Don's Maps started. I got much better computers and software over the years, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for example, and my maps became colourised and had more detail. I did a lot of maps of thetravels of Ayla from Jean Auel's books, and I gradually included other pages with more and more photos available from the web, and scanned from books or from scientific papers, since I was not happy with the quality generally available. I became very interested in the Venus figurines, and set out to make acomplete record of the ice age ones. Along the way I got interested in archaeology for its own sake.

In 2008 my wife and I went to Europe, and when we arrived in Frankfurt at sunrise after the 24 hour plane trip from Sydney, while my wife left on her own tour with her sister, they visited relatives in Germany and Austria, I went off by myself on the train to Paris. Later that afternoon I took a train to Brive-la-Gaillarde, found a hotel and caught up on lost sleep. The next morning I hired a car, and over the next four weeks visited and photographed many of the original archaeological sites in the south of France, as well as many archaeological museums. It was a wonderful experience.My wife and I met up again later in the Black Forest, andcycled down the Danube from its source to Budapest, camping most of the way, a wonderful trip, collecting many photos, including a visit toDolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic, as well as visiting the Vienna natural history museum. Jean Auel fans will realise the significance of that trip!

Luckily I speak French, the trips to France would have been difficult or impossible otherwise. No one outside large cities speaks English (or they refuse to). I was travelling independently, not as part of a tour group. I never knew where I was going to be the next night, and I camped nearly everywhere, except for large cities. I am a very experienced bushwalker (hiker) and have the required equipment -a one-man ultra lightweight tent, sleeping bag, stove, raincoat, and so on, all of which I make myself for use here when I go bushwalking, especially down the beautiful gorges east of Armidale, though for Europe I use a commercial two person lightweight tent, since weight is not so much of a problem when cycling or using a car, and in any case my wife was with me when cycling, once along the Donau from its source to Budapest in 2008, and again from Amsterdam to Copenhagen and then up the Rhine from Köln to the Black Forest in 2014, both of which were memorable and wonderful trips.

In 2012 we went to Canada for a wedding and to visit old friends, and I took the opportunity to visit the wonderful Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, where I took many photographs of the items on exhibit, particularly of the superb display of artefacts of theFirst Nations of the Pacific Northwest.

In 2014 my wife and I did another European cycling tour, fromAmsterdam to Copenhagen, then from Cologne up the Rhine to the Black Forest, camping most of the way in each case, and taking many useful photos in museums along the way, including the museums at Leiden, Netherlands, andRoskilde in Denmark, and the National Museum in Copenhagen. Again, I later hired a car and did more photography and visited many more sites in France.

In 2015 I made a lone visit to all the major museums in western Europe by public transport, mostly by train, and that went very well. I had learned a lot of German while travelling with my wife, who is a fluent speaker of the language, and of all the European countries, Germany is my favourite. I feel comfortable there. I love the people, the food, and the beer. Germans are gemütlich, I have many friends there now.

I repeated the visit to western Europe in 2018, to fill in some gaps of museums I had not visited the first time, because they were either closed for renovation the first time (such as the Musée de l'Homme in Paris) or because I ran out of time, or because I wanted to fill in some gaps from major museums such as the British Museum, the Berlin Museum, München, the Louvre, the Petrie and Natural History Museums in London, the Vienna Natural History Museum, the important museum in Brno, and museums in northern Germany. It takes at least two visits, preferably three, to thoroughly explore the items on display in a major museum.

I spend a lot of time on the site, typically at least a few hours a day, often more. I do a lot of translation of original papers not available in English, a time consuming but I believe a valuable task. People and fate have been very generous to me, and it is good to give back a very small part of what I have been given. With the help of online translation apps and use of online dictionaries there are few languages I cannot translate, though I find Czech a challenge!

Life has been kind to me, I want for nothing, and am in good health. Not many in the world are as lucky as I am, and I am grateful for my good fortune.

My best wishes to all who read and enjoy the pages of my site.

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
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And may rain on a tin roof lull you to sleep at night.

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Website last updated Monday 10 March 2025

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