**HAB** ::HAB 
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The Deba Prehistoric Valley is a remarkable window into the past, a privileged territory where more than 200,000 years of human history can be traced with extraordinary clarity. Everything begins in Africa 4.2 million years ago with the first australopithecines, and continues with those early humans who, around 2 million years ago, started their gradual expansion across Asia and Europe. The oldest traces in Europe are preserved in Atapuerca and Orce, belonging to the ancestors of the Neanderthals who settled in the Deba Valley about 200,000 years ago. Later, Homo sapiens emerged in Africa and embarked on the great migration some 90,000 years ago, reaching the Pyrenees and entering the Iberian Peninsula around 40,000 years before present. With them came more advanced tools, new forms of symbolic expression, and the first artistic manifestations that would forever change the way we understand the world.
The valley was an exceptional place to live: it offered safe caves, abundant game, marine resources, and a milder climate than that of the inland mountains. For this reason, it concentrates one of the most significant Paleolithic site clusters in the Cantabrian region and the Pyrenees. Its caves preserve the footsteps of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, along with tools, fossils, and extraordinary pieces of art such as the Ekain paintings or the Praileaitz 1 pendants. Geological studies allow us to reconstruct a landscape shaped by major climatic changes, including the Last Glacial Maximum, when the coastline lay up to 10-15 kilometres further out and sea level was 120 metres lower than today. Thanks to over a century of work by speleologists, geologists, palaeontologists, and archaeologists -and to the current conservation of materials at Gordailua, the Heritage Collections Centre of Gipuzkoa- we now have more than 60 catalogued sites that offer an exceptionally clear understanding of how our ancestors lived.

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