Last year, three potholers discovered a small cave in a cliff near Ferreries in Minorca, in the Balearic Islands. At the end of a narrow passage they found a small area, measuring slightly more than four square metres, which contained remains of wood, hair and intact human bones. Aware of the site’s significance, they immediately contacted the Island Council, which reported the discovery the University of the Balearic Islands and the University of Barcelona. These two institutions then set up a research project which in the short space of a year has already produced some spectacular results.

The small cave contained remains of around a hundred individuals of all ages and both sexes. Seventy of them were preserved almost entirely. However, the most interesting point for the scientists was the state of preservation of the organic matter: muscle tissue, tissue of the chest and skull cavities, hair, and scalp. Leaving aside cases of mummification (in which the remains are preserved intentionally) this is the oldest site in Europe in which human remains have been preserved in such a natural way.

The first stage of the project – six months of intensive digging, funded by the Caixa Catalunya Foundation and the Island Council – has now concluded. In early May, the research team – Josep M. Fullola and Maria A. Petit, prehistorians at the Seminar of Studies & Research into Prehistory at the UB (SERP),Víctor Guerrero and Manuel Calvo from the UIB, and Assumpció Malgosa from the UAB – presented the preliminary results of the study at the Museum of Archaeology of Catalonia.

Radiocarbon dating suggest that the remains date from between 1100 and 700 BC, and probably belong to a large family that performed burials in this cave over a period of four hundred years. The corpses were buried in a fetal position, lying on their side with the limbs bent and drawn up. Surprisingly, only a few were accompanied by personal ornaments and other symbolic objects. The researchers’ hypothesis is that the rituals were mainly performed outside, and that the cave was reserved for the laying of the bodies. The remains found show that the corpses were wrapped in cowhide, tied with cords and transported on wooden biers.

The researchers are about to start the most important stage of the project, the analysis of the data. This painstaking laboratory work will be carried out by a variety of teams with the support of specialists in sedimentology, archaeozoology, environmental reconstruction, phytoliths, coal petrography, metallurgy, and physical anthropology. Together, they hope to be able to answer the big question the site raises: why is the organic matter in the Cova des Pas so well preserved? According to Josep M. Fullola, «it’s a job that combines CSI and a great deal of patience. But it’s worth it, because this site is the only one of its kind in Europe». The project’s future is in doubt due to a lack of resources: around 200,000 euros are needed. «It isn’t a great deal of money, since the research project may last three years more. We’ve made contact with a number of universities and we hope the response will be positive; without adequate funding, the excavations may come to nothing», says the researcher Maria A. Petit.

In the final stage of the project, the data will be published and the area will be partially opened to the public. Fullola and Petit hope to be able to reconstruct the ideology and the symbolic world of the group that performed these burials. They already have some hypotheses: «the group must have been farmers of the pre-Talayotic culture, and descendants of the island’s first inhabitants». They acknowledge that the settlement of the Balearics remains an enigma for prehistorians. The eastern part of the Iberian peninsula became populated around 6000 BC, but in the Balearics the process did not take place until 4000 and 5000 BC, much later than the other islands of the Mediterranean (Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily). «It is one thing to discover a place and quite another to settle there and colonize it», says Fullola.

The Cova des Pas may not solve the mystery, but it brings us a vivid picture of the life and death of the inhabitants of Minorca more than 3000 years ago.