The oldest tourist attraction is 40,000 years old and in Spain
3 January, 2024Spain, as a major tourist power, has such unique tourist attractions as the Nerja Cave, which is the oldest cave in Europe. This was recently reported in The Sun newspaper, which noted that “tourists have been flocking to Europe’s oldest tourist attraction in one form or another for over 40,000 years”.
The cave was discovered in 1959 by a group of youths out hunting bats. Recently, a team of researchers from the University of Cordoba used carbon dating techniques to determine exactly when these first visits took place. The result is that humans visited the caves 41,291 years ago, 10,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Marián Medina, the study’s lead author, believes that groups of humans entered to create artwork or simply to admire the caves. Since its rediscovery in the 1950s, the Nerja cave has become one of the most popular tourist attractions in Andalusia and Spain.