The Altamira cave, now famous for its unique collection of prehistoric art, was well known to local people, but had not been given much attention until 1868, when it was "discovered" by the hunter Modesto Cubillas Pérez.

[1] Sautuola, having seen similar images engraved on Paleolithic objects displayed at the World Exposition in Paris the year before, rightly assumed that the paintings might also date from the Stone Age.

The French specialists, led by their guru Gabriel de Mortillet, were particularly adamant in rejecting the hypothesis of Sautuola and Piera and their findings were loudly ridiculed at the 1880 Prehistorical Congress in Lisbon.

In 1902, the respected French archaeologist Émile Cartailhac, who had been one of the leading critics, emphatically admitted his mistake in the article, "Mea culpa d'un sceptique", published in the journal L'Anthropologie.

[5][1] Sautuola had died fourteen years before Cartailhac's apology, and did not live to enjoy the restitution of his honour or the later scientific confirmation of his premonitions.