Coa Valley prehistoric rock art begs the question “Why?”

Marco angled his flashlight’s beam against the rocks. Suddenly, prehistoric aurochs and deer jumped out at us – ironically easier to see at night than during bright sunshine. Portugal’s Coa Valley, featuring the largest outdoor prehistoric rock art site on the planet, begs the question, “Why?”

Far off Portugal’s well-trodden tourist path, the Coa Valley’s carvings fascinated us with their stories: a David-and-Goliath stand-off over a dam that would have submerged the art, the fastest-ever UNESCO World Heritage site designation, and then the art itself. Who were the artists? Why did they choose this valley as an art gallery? Why did they carve mostly animals? Why do the carvings overlap, when nearby rocks are bare?  

In the far northeast corner of Portugal, the Coa Valley Archeological Park overlaps with the upper Douro Valley wine region, both with UNESCO World Heritage designations. Hot, dry, steep hills covered with olives, grapevines and almond trees plunge into deep river valleys where people carved on the schist rocks 30,000 to 12,000 years ago.

It can be tricky to figure out how to visit the Coa Valley and the town of Vila Nova de Foz Coa, commonly called Foz Coa. Stay tuned for a story with tips.

By the end of our four-day three-night visit, our eyes could more easily follow the animal outlines. But my brain continued to ponder questions: What’s the difference between signs and art? What’s the purpose of art? Why here? Why can’t all underdogs win?   

Coa Valley Museum

Computerized photo effects let us pose with a couple even older than us. On the right, what looks like a three-headed goat is actually an ibex moving its head – a very early example of animation. 

Our explorations began at the Coa Valley Museum, to wrap our heads around what this place was all about and to figure out what we were looking when we later went on guided tours out in the field – the real highlight.

Set high on steep hills above the Coa River, the modern, angular building belied the prehistoric subject matter within. The valley features 1,300 engraved rocks (as of 2022) at nearly 100 sites, mostly from the Upper Paleolithic period of 30,000 to 12,0000 years ago.

Let’s pause for a moment to think about that: 30,000 years ago. It’s hard to fathom. The time difference even from the more recent carvings, 12,000 years ago, is difficult to grasp.

The museum makes effective use of coloured outlines to help visitors attune their eyes to the shapes and differing styles of carving. The weaving (top right) is a modern take.

Proving that paleolithic rock art is not all in caves, the Coa Valley’s carvings, mostly of animals, are in the open air, etched into the relatively soft dark brown schist rocks. The carving sites are scattered along two rivers – the Coa River (primarily) and the Douro River where the two rivers meet.

Schist splinters easily, creating many flat surfaces that may have enticed prehistoric artists. They filled those rock canvases with the animals they saw around them – mostly aurochs (an ancient ox or cow), goats, deer, horses, and some fish.

I sat and watched the moving computerized outlines of the animals overlaid on a replica of the Fariseu 1 rock art site.

We examined dozens of replicas of rock-art panels, many with computerized coloured outlines that traced the overlapping animals so we could attune our eyes to finding them. The museum exhibits very few original rock art pieces – that’s on purpose so that the archeological sites themselves are highlighted.

Human figures began appearing in the rock art about 15,000 years ago and gradually became the main motif. 

The Ibex from Quinta da Barca 3 was a highlight. This ibex (a species of wild goat) looked like it had three heads but is, in fact, an early version of animation. The head moves from left to right.

The drawing on the left helped us pick out the figure on the rock – a human carrying a shield, a knife on his belt, and a spear.

The museum discussed different artistic techniques and styles, the discovery and conservation of the Coa art, replicas of key rock faces, and theories about what it all means.

Why did people go to so much trouble to carve these animals into these particular rocks? Theories abound. They’re signs pointing to good hunting grounds. They’re part of shamanic rituals or religious rituals. They’re territorial markers. Prominent bellies on females could indicate fertility rites or hunting success – both key to survival in Paleolithic times. 

Looking somewhat like a rocky outcrop typical of the region, the modern Coa Museum design belies the prehistoric subject matter within.

One display pointed out that anyone’s interpretation depends very much on when that person is trying to figure it out. For example, in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, interpretations were influenced by “ideas about the existence of a lost paradise and of an idyllic past.” Since the 1960s, theories see the art as an organized set of signs, although their meanings can be hidden, and the location can be as meaningful as the depictions in the carvings.

The latest thinking is that prehistoric humans carved these animals as a pastime, for pure aesthetic pleasure. In other words, art for art’s sake.

Still, nobody can really answer that big “Why?” and maybe never will. We have to be satisfied with that and admire these carvings as they are.

Dam story

At the Canada do Inferno dock on the Coa River, we saw the cofferdam – an interim dam to stop the water flow while the enormous dam was built. At the dock is the solar-powered boat we later took to see the Fariseu rock site.

We learned about the David-and-Goliath dam story in the museum by watching an excellent video (in Portuguese, with English subtitles). Later, during our guided tours to see the rock art in situ, we picked up more details – and saw the dam evidence.

Local farmers, fishermen, millers and shepherds had to have noticed the rock art over the centuries, even if some were obscured by lichen. But nobody paid any attention until construction on a hydroelectric power dam began. In 1991, the carvings were “discovered” again, and an archaeologist confirmed that the engravings near the cofferdam site were 10,000 to 20,000 years old.

The dam would soon flood the Coa Valley, submerging all the art far below the surface, up to 100 metres deep. Farms and wineries would have been inundated too. On the other hand, the dam would have created much-needed jobs. The issue divided families, friends, and communities along the river.

Local high school students made the difference in saving the carvings. Even though many of their parents didn’t support them, students led protest demonstrations, campouts and sit-ins that blocked roads.

“As gravuras não sabem nadar,” the students chanted. “Rock engravings can’t swim.”

If the dam project had gone ahead, the Coa Valley would have been flooded about two-thirds of the way up the steep hills.

As the issue heated up, a British newspaper article triggered international attention. Archeologists arrived from France’s Lascaux Caves and Spain’s Altamira Cave. All sides conducted more studies and assessments. The controversy became a hot political potato during the 1995 national Portuguese election. Antonio Guterres (now Secretary-General of the United Nations) promised that if he won and became prime minister, he would stop the dam project despite the huge financial losses.

He won. He stopped the dam. And his government created the Coa Valley Archeological Park for further protection.

However, governments can change, so the park applied to UNESCO for World Heritage status. In 1998, status was granted – the fastest-ever approval by UNESCO. 

The takeaway? Underdogs do win sometimes.

We left the museum better educated about the dam project. But the sheer enormity of it didn’t begin to sink in until the first of our three guided tours.

Canada do Inferno guided tour

Looking way up… we could see even more of the abandoned dam infrastructure. The white vehicle roof you can see, middle left, is on the road we took to get to the Canada do Inferno site. 

Our guide, Luis, drove us from the museum to the Canada do Inferno trailhead in his all-terrain vehicle along rough steep winding cobblestone and dirt roads. While still high above the river, we passed some concrete constructions that had begun before the dam was halted. At first, I couldn’t figure out what I was seeing because these bits of concrete walls and foundations were so tremendously high up from the water. We could see down to the cofferdam on the river and I couldn’t connect the two in my mind. Were all these concrete bits part of the dam?

They were.

My jaw may have dropped as I began to understand just how massive the dam and the resulting reservoir would have been. The rock carvings would have been so far underwater that only advanced  divers could reach them.

Steep schist steps led down to the Coa River at the end of the Canada do Inferno trail.

Crazy ideas – including glass-bottom boats and scuba diving tours – had been floated so that the dam could go ahead and people could still see the underwater rock art, Luis told us, as we stood in the Canada do Inferno parking lot gazing at the dam leftovers. The art would have been so deep down that the ideas were laughable.

Another proposal was to chisel them off and put them in a museum.

“That’s the worst idea,” he said. The rock art is better understood by seeing it where it was created.

Luis, who grew up and still lives on a local farm, was away at university when the protests happened. But he heard all the stories: one archeologist chained herself to a rock and didn’t eat or drink.

Even before the dam controversy, about 90 percent of the rock art was already underwater because of another dam built 50 years ago on the Douro River at the village of Pocinho, raising the water level in the Coa River too, he said. Of the remaining 10 percent of rock art, we can see five percent and the other five percent is too hard to access.

With that, Luis led us to the start of the Canada do Inferno trail.

“What does ‘Canada do Inferno’ mean?” I asked. As a Canadian, I was curious. It’s a phrase that befuddles our translation apps, which reply “Canada from hell.”

“‘Canada’ means ‘canyon, or steep-sided valley’,” he explained. “And it can get up to 50 degrees C here in the summer.”

Okay then. A well-named area!

Along the trail, Luis pointed out almond trees – a major crop around Foz Coa. Luis is a ninth-generation farmer who grows almonds.

Olives (left) and pistachios grow well around Foz Coa.

The rock art sites can be visited only with a guide who has specialized training in rock art. Luis was excellent. Along the trail, he pointed out local flora and fauna. A small, brown lizard darted past us. Vultures, falcons and eagles cruised along the valley.

Luise showed us wild pistachio trees, which I’d never seen before. The little nuts grow in clusters like grapes. You need one male tree for every nine females if you want to get nuts. At one point, early settlers cut down the trees that didn’t bear nuts – the males – and then no trees bore nuts. Duh.

He also pointed out wild almond trees and invited us to taste one, warning that these were not sweet almonds. Yuck. He was right. Quite bitter. I’d always wondered why some almond products were labelled “sweet almond” as opposed to just “almond.” Now I knew why.

The trail came to a steep descent along steps cut from the rock, down closer to the river where we found the rock art.

I stared eagerly at the tangled carvings. This was why we’d come! But I found it difficult to decipher individual animals amongst all the overlapping lines.

Breaking off a long sturdy reed, Luis used it as a pointer to outline an auroch. Ah, I could see it then! A blunt-hosed big ox, with horns curved forward, like ears pricked to hear something ahead.

Luis showed us colour-coded outlines of the overlapping animals, making it easier to pick out the carvings on the vertical schist rocks.

Some carvings had thicker lines than others – a result of different carving methods. Some artists used a hard stone chisel to create thin, shallow lines; others used a rock as a hammer to bang in wider lines (also called pecking); still others scraped finer lines using sharp-edged tools, like flint.

Luis discussed more “Why?” theories. Perhaps the carvings are totems – after hunting an animal, people gave thanks by carving it into the rock. Or was it a school of art, with students practising? Like the skinny horse on the rock to the left?

“Or perhaps people saw these rocks and thought it looks like a white wall for graffiti!”

At water level, we saw the stone remains of a mill just below and above the surface. Nearby, we examined “modern” carvings made in 1781 and 1786 by a miller named Manoel.

“The miller may have thought ‘my art will be eternal so people will remember me.’ We remember Manoel,” said Luis.

Not all carvings are prehistoric. A miller name Manoel carved this one in 1781 and 1786. In this traditionally poor area, millers used millstones to grind grain until the 1950s and ‘60s.

He led us to another spot and announced a test: “Can you find the auroch?”

I squinted, trying to detangle the overlapping animal lines. I finally spotted a curving belly, and Luis confirmed my find.

We began to devise a spotting code: big bellies usually meant female. A head with a ‘V’ on top was usually a deer. Thick lines indicated the pecking method. Very fine lines meant it was carved using flint.

By the end of the tour, I was much better at finding and identifying aurochs, deer, horses and goats.

Night tour to Penascosa

Marco shone his flashlight at the perfect angle to make this goat carving stand out.

Our night tour to the Penascosa site began in the town of Castelo Melhor, a 20-minute drive from Foz Coa down the steep valley, across the Coa River, and up the steep hills on the far side. We found our guide, Marco, at the Park Reception Centre, met an Italian couple on our tour, and we all piled into Marco’s all-terrain vehicle – definitely needed for the rough road ahead.

Our first obstacle was a huge flock of sheep blocking the narrow road as they ambled towards a local cheese-making farm to be milked.

“Ladies, please let me pass,” he pleaded.

An enormous peachy-orange moon rose behind Castelo Melhor’s castle – built to guard the nearby border with Spain. My journal notes wandered off into indecipherable scribble as we jounced down six kilometres of an increasingly pot-holed lane that clung to the edge of the mountain.

“This is the massage,” he joked. “Enjoy it for free. During the day, we offer a sauna.”

Midway along the route, still far above river level, Marco announced: “The water could have come up to here with the dam.”  

Marco wasn’t from Foz Coa, but his wife had been a student who had chanted “Rock engravings can’t swim.” 

Marco traced animal carvings using what he called his “Paleolithic pointer” – a reed.

We finally reached the Penascosa parking lot, then set off walking along fairly flat trails to several rock art spots. The full moon lit our way.

At the first stop, we sat on an abandoned millstone still radiating heat from the day. That’s where Marco first held his large flashlight at just the right angle and the animals popped out at us. I was thrilled that we’d chosen the night visit, rather than the daytime Penascosa tour. Using his reed, he traced three aurochs, then a male mountain goat with long horns.

The hunter-gatherer age was cooler than now, so people sought out this warmer microclimate, he explained. The Coa Valley became a popular stop for the nomadic people, which helped explain why there are so many carvings. 

At Penascosa, the carvings are from 30,000 to 22,000 years ago, including a fish, which is rare. We saw massive bull aurochs, a cow looking backwards, horses (which were pony-sized), mountain goats, and some deer, although deer were more commonly carved in “recent” times i.e. 15,000 to 12,000 years ago.

The museum’s colour-coded overlays make the animals, on the same Penascosa rock that Marco showed us (above), easier to distinguish.

Why do the carvings overlap? It’s not because they didn’t have space, Marco said. There are tons of unengraved rocks. If we compare this with today’s graffiti that also overlap, we could interpret the carvings as territorial marks. Or, was it a holy place? The groups of animals could mean people enacted sacred rituals so it was important to leave their marks on particular rocks. But then, in Australia, the most important rocks are left blank.

Marco led us to a horse with three heads – another example of animation. As he moved his flashlight, the heads seemed to move.

“No one carved over this horse, just like nobody puts anything on a Banksy,” he said. “For me it’s one of the masterpieces of this rock art site. Horses were the most common.”

The fish we saw – probably a salmon – had additional lines around it that could be either a second fish or lines of movement. Why so few fish carvings? Perhaps fish were just too ordinary.

We climbed steps to the last carvings and Marco announced another test.

“How many animals can you spot?”

Working together, we found a horse, a goat, a male goat sporting generous proof of his gender, and another horse with a flowing mane.

Not a bad night’s work.

Solar electric boat tour to Fariseu

Our Fariseu guide traced an animal carved using the pecking technique, which produced thicker lines.

The next morning, we drove ourselves back to the Canada do Inferno parking lot, praying that our little Honda Jazz could power up those steep lanes. We made it just fine! At the dock, we climbed aboard a quiet solar-powered boat to ride upriver to the Fariseu site, where the most recent carvings have been discovered.

There, we joined a group led by a guide speaking only Portuguese. We never did learn her name. However, we happily realized that we understood a fair bit, especially since we had already learned similar information from the museum, Luis, and Marco.

We followed the group to several spots where she traced the animals. We saw more aurochs – one enormous one, with smaller aurochs below him; a horse with its head down, eating or drinking; another horse with a full mane. You might think this would be boring, after seeing so many carvings, but it wasn’t; I found it quite compelling, even during our third tour.

Flint was used in more-recent times (12,000 years ago) to carve animals with very fine lines, like the Coa Valley Archeological Park logo.

We gathered around a table laid with various chunks of quartz, flint and other rocks, and she explained the three carving methods. She passed around a piece of flint. When it came to me, I fingered the business edge and boy, was it ever sharp! I hadn’t realized stone could be that sharp.

Our guide said some of the stone tools, including flint, were not from the area; some were from up to 200 kilometers away. That indicated the people were mobile and traded tools and ideas with others.

We missed some details, since the tour was in Portuguese, but I learned through research afterwards that archeologists had excavated a rock face labelled Fariseu 1 in 1999 when the river’s water level was much lower. Fariseu proved the age of the Coa’s carvings. Now, it’s back underwater, but we’d seen the museum’s replica.

At Fariseu, we saw an unfinished excavation site (right) with dozens of carvings, just discovered in 2020.

On the return boat trip, we noticed old “windmills” scattered at different heights on the steep slopes, but they were in bad locations to catch the wind. The next day, on our Coa Walkways hike, we discovered what they really were.

Coa Walkways hike

We enjoyed the splendid view of the T where the Coa River (on the right) empties into the Douro River.

On our last day, we got up early to hike the Coa Walkways – a combination of boardwalks and stairs that has 890 steps and a drop of 160 metres. Starting behind the Coa Museum at 7:22 a.m. and 21 degrees Celsius, we descended to just above the old Coa railway station on the Douro River. Signs along the way gave useful information about the valley and what we could see.

No carvings here, but what splendid views! I loved seeing the rugged slopes, terraced with schist-stone walls to grow grapevines and olive trees. We confidently spotted a pistachio tree, thanks to Luis’ guidance. 

Pigeon houses in the Coa Valley date back to the mid-1700s. This one was restored in 2010.

We stuck our heads inside a round, white-washed building that looked like a windmill base, just like others we’d seen during our boat trip to Fariseu. But it turned out to be a pigeon house! That was new to me. The Coa Valley Archeological Park encompasses about 300 pigeon houses, first built in the mid-1700s, according to the info panel. People ate pigeons and used their manure to fertilize fields.

We saw more dam buildings, walls and other infrastructure we couldn’t identify that had been built incredibly far up the steep slopes. I still shook my head, amazed at how that dam would have completely changed the entire area.

But the best view was the T where the Coa River emptied into the Douro River. Vineyards ribboned their way along the steep slopes – with grapes destined for the Douro’s famous port wine as well as many superb Douro red wines.

On the far side of the Coa River, we saw the ribboned vineyards sloping down to the Douro River.

The stair hike ended just above the old Coa railway station, a former stop on the Douro Line. Before the railway was built, people and goods travelled on the Douro River. But the trip was turbulent and dangerous before dams were built. A trip downriver from Foz Coa to Porto took three days; returning took a week.

Inaugurated in 1873, the railway line from Porto gradually lengthened until 1887 when it reached Barco d’Alva near the Spanish border. It carried wine, cereals, ore and people for a century. But, in the 1960s and 1970s, economic crises particularly hit rural areas; masses of people moved to the cities or emigrated to places like Canada. The furthest stations on the line, including Coa, were closed. Now the railway ends in Pocinho.

The former Foz Coa train station on the Douro River is being renovated into a restaurant.

We started the return hike back up the stairs at 8:15 a.m., stopping at many places to “admire the view” (i.e. catch our breath). Overhead, large birds circled, but we didn’t know enough to identify them. Next time, we’ll book a guided tour with Marco, who loves birding. Bonelli’s eagle and Golden eagles make this area home, as well as Egyptian and Griffon vultures, black storks and alpine swifts.

Surprisingly, we reached the top at 8:57! I was kinda proud we did it so quickly. And I was happy we’d got up early. The thermometer later climbed to 35 degrees. But at least it wasn’t a 50-degree Canada from hell….

Our return hike up the Coa Walkway was slower than the descent.

As we drove home, I pondered all the still-unanswered questions about the carvings.

Maybe, like Manoel the miller, those prehistoric artists just wanted to be remembered. And although we don’t know their names, they are indeed celebrated in the Coa Valley. Maybe that’s the simple answer to “Why?”

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We visited the Coa Valley in August 2024. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.