Location | Asphendou village, Sfakia, Crete, Greece |
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Coordinates | 35°14′07.0″N 24°13′00.6″E / 35.235278°N 24.216833°E |
Altitude | 740 m (2,428 ft)[1] |
Type | Cave |
Length | 1.15 m (3.8 ft) |
Width | 0.8 m (2.6 ft) |
History | |
Periods | Upper Palaeolithic-Bronze Age |
Site notes | |
Discovered | 1960s |
Management | Local |
Public access | Yes |
The small Asphendou Cave in western Crete preserves a number of overlapping petroglyphs on a limestone speleothem that may have been made between the Upper Palaeolithic and the early Bronze Age. The oldest of these, that possibly dates from the Upper Palaeolithic, depicts a number of quadrupeds which may represent extinct Candiacervus deer. Overlapping some of these are a layer of paddle-shaped carvings. Patterns formed from rock cupules were added at some later point, likely around the end of the Neolithic or start of the Bronze Age. The final layer mostly consists of a few boats.
When first researched in the 1960s, the identification of the quadrupeds was uncertain. It was thought they might be kri-kri goats and date from the Bronze Age. A reanalysis in 2018 was able to clearly map the different layers, and draw on knowledge of Candiacervus that post-dated the petroglyphs' discovery to date the oldest layer to somewhere within the Late Pleistocene or Upper Palaeolithic. This dating would make the quadrupeds the first known figural art from Crete, and from all Greece, to pre-date the Neolithic period.