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.

Patterns formed from rock cupules were added at some later point, likely around the end of the Neolithic or start of the Bronze Age.

This dating would make the quadrupeds the first known figural art from Crete, and from all Greece, to pre-date the Neolithic period.

The petroglyphs were carved in Asphendou Cave (Σπήλαιο Ασφένδου), also called Skordolakkia (Σκορδαλάκια/Σχορδολάχχια/Ασχορδόλαχια),[2] [3]: 406, 408  (35°14′07.0″ N 24°13′00.6″E), which lies about 720 metres (2,360 ft) above sea level in the White Mountains of western Crete, a Mediterranean island now part of Greece.

[1]: 100 [4] The cave is about 600 metres (2,000 ft) southeast of the centre of the village, and is located near the start of a gorge that stretches south towards the coast, about two hours walk away.

[3]: 406 The area around the cave is a karst landscape, with Jurassic limestone lining the southern slopes of the White Mountains.

[1]: 103  The carvings may have been made with black quartzite, an abundant material in the region which is hard enough to cut into limestone.

As the antlers are straight and non-branching, the herd depicted may be Candiacervus deer, a genus which had eight species endemic to Crete but went extinct six thousand years before the beginning of the Bronze Age.

[5] Some of the carved images depicted quadrupeds with what appeared to be long straight horns above their head, which were not identified during initial research.

Later discoveries of more intact fossils of the eight known species of Candiacervus deer, thought to have been endemic to Crete, in caves along the island's northern coast provided clearer possible identities for the carvings.

Fossils of Candiacervus ropalophorus, which inhabited the island from the Middle to Late Pleistocene, have been found showing long and unbranched horns.

[1]: 106  The identification of the quadrupeds as Candiacervus puts a limit on how recent the carvings can be, with the genus going extinct around 21,500 years ago.

[1]: 107 The Asphendou Cave petroglyphs thus may extend backwards the date of the first human settlement in Crete, which was formerly thought to have been Neolithic.