Don Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola y Pedrueca, also called Marcelino de Sautuola, was a Spanish jurist and amateur archaeologist who owned the land where the Altamira cave was discovered.

Altamira cave

The Altamira cave, now famous for its unique collection of prehistoric art, was known to local people but received little attention until 1868, when a hunter named Modesto Cubillas Pérez discovered it.

In 1875, a man named Sautuola began exploring the caves. He did not learn about the paintings until 1879, when his eight-year-old daughter, María, noticed images of bison on the ceiling. Sautuola had seen similar images on Paleolithic objects at a World Exposition in Paris the year before and thought the paintings might be from the Stone Age. He asked an archaeologist from the University of Madrid to help him study the cave further.

Professor Juan Vilanova y Piera supported Sautuola’s ideas, and together they published their findings in 1880, which received public praise. However, many scientists at the time did not believe the paintings were that old. French experts, led by Gabriel de Mortillet, strongly disagreed with Sautuola and Piera’s findings. Their work was criticized at the 1880 Prehistorical Congress in Lisbon. Because the paintings were so well-preserved and artistically advanced, some people accused Sautuola of creating them himself. A fellow citizen claimed that a modern artist had painted them on Sautuola’s request.

Over the next 20 years, other discoveries of prehistoric art made the Altamira paintings seem more likely to be ancient. Scientists eventually stopped opposing Sautuola’s work. In 1902, Émile Cartailhac, a respected French archaeologist who had once criticized Sautuola, admitted he was wrong in an article titled "Mea culpa d'un sceptique" published in the journal L'Anthropologie.

Sautuola had died 14 years before Cartailhac’s apology and did not live to see his reputation restored or the scientific confirmation of his early ideas. Modern dating methods have shown that the Altamira cave paintings were created over thousands of years, between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago. For the study of Paleolithic art, Sautuola’s discoveries are now considered extremely important.

Family

Sautuola's daughter later married into the Botín family of Cantabrian bourgeoisie. The present owners of Banco Santander are family members of Sautuola.