10. The Grand Tour Préhistorique: Final Week

I spent the last week of the Grand Tour Préhistorique in the beautiful region of Cantabria (northern Spain). After the Dordogne, this is the area with the highest concentration of prehistoric cave art in the world. Although my Spanish is nowhere near as good as my French, I made some wonderful contacts there and would gladly have stayed much longer. After this, the fairy tale was over, but the journey continues soon.

The most famous cave in the region is undoubtedly Altamira. The stunning drawings of bison, deer, and all manner of peculiar abstract figures are found not on the walls but on the ceiling. You can barely get into the real cave anymore, but the replica is well worth a visit, if only because on quiet days you can lie down on the floor and take your sweet time looking at everything. It's a relatively small and shallow cave, but it contains a treasure trove of drawings and comes with a remarkable discovery story. It was even the first place where rock art was discovered in Europe. In 1879, the nobleman Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola was searching the cave - which happened to be on his estate - for prehistoric tools. Instead of looking at the ground, his young daughter looked up at the ceiling and spotted a large collection of animal drawings. The scientific community didn't believe Sautuola, because the drawings were too beautiful and too well-preserved, and besides, wall paintings had never previously been attributed to the Stone Age. He was accused of forgery. Only years after his death, when cave after cave was discovered in France containing the most exquisite drawings, did Altamira finally receive recognition as a pinnacle of early European art. A film was made about Sautuola's struggles called Finding Altamira (2016), but it is so terrible that it is only watchable for fans of campy cinema.

The discovery of Altamira says a great deal about how we respond to paradigm shifts in science. It's easy to point at 19th-century men in top hats as hopelessly paradigmatic, but how open are we ourselves to new discoveries? Archaeology is still a young discipline, only professionalised in the 1980s. Techniques are constantly improving, and with some regularity discoveries are made that push entire timelines further back and upend our assumptions about the capabilities of early humans. What are the current blind spots and biases in our knowledge that are on the verge of being overturned? In any case, it is high time to dismantle the image of prehistory as a brutal and miserable era. And that is exactly what I hope to do with my upcoming film. Elena Sanchez Moral, a researcher at the Altamira Museum, agreed wholeheartedly and was more than happy to assist with the project.

Another gem in the region is the Museum of Prehistory and Archaeology of Cantabria (MUPAC) in the centre of Santander. Accompanied by meditative music, you can wander through a hall filled with beautifully decorated pieces of bone and ivory. The engraved animals were refined and crafted by a masterful hand, and I just wanted to keep looking and looking, something pulled me in and I could barely leave. I thought: these are definitely going into the next film. With García Moreno Alejandro, the interim director, I had a fascinating conversation about translating science into a fiction film, and he too was keen to support the project on the scientific side.

This week I also met illustrator Marina Lezcano (@mlezac). She had read about my project on EXARC and suggested we meet when I arrived in Santander (which I had indicated in the schedule on my website). For the occasion, we went back into the MUPAC together, along with her boyfriend Adrian (also an illustrator, but for games). Marina has made beautiful yet playful drawings for both academic articles and children's books, and her illustrations also hang in museums. In them you see a side of Palaeolithic humans that you don't often encounter: children, mothers, love between a Homo sapiens and a Neanderthal; the kind of images that inspire me. Marina was happy to join the project and make concept art to accompany the script.

Meanwhile, a friend of mine had flown over from the Netherlands, and Adrian took us to two freely accessible caves in the countryside. There are apparently around 10,000 caves in Cantabria alone, and only a fraction of them are protected. Most contain no prehistoric finds, and there is simply no budget or interest in sealing them off. Who knows, maybe there's one where I can shoot a film scene someday. In one of the caves we arrived at a very small opening in the ground, a tunnel you can only pass through backwards, on your back. Terrifying, but I did it anyway, and we emerged into a small chamber full of stalactites and graffiti dating back to the 1970s. We turned off the lights briefly to experience total darkness, and I was very quickly very glad we had brought torches.

Around Santander there are about six prehistoric painted caves open to the public. Much like in the Dordogne, you can visit these phenomenal sites with a guide. And equally like the Dordogne, the guides tend to speak few words beyond the border. I mean, I was at a level where I could hold a discussion about la extinción del neandertal with an alcoholic man in a downtown Santander bar (¿genocidio o fusión?). And here, I could just able to follow remarks about formaciones geológicas or ríos subterráneos, but that was about it. Next time I'll stay a bit longer in Spain and make a proper attempt at the language. Either way, the cave art was breathtaking, subtle, delightful... I was overwhelmed every single time. El Castillo, Cullalvera, Las Monedas, you name them, the caves of Cantabria each have their own story. Charming deer, iconic cattle, mysterious dots... I was a child in a candy shop and I want to go back as soon as possible.

Sadly, the travel time ran out, and I began the journey home. I managed, at the very last moment, to arrange a meeting with Nathalie Fourment, the director of the Musée National de Préhistoire in Les Eyzies. It felt like a fitting conclusion to a month of networking in the Périgord. As it is a government institution, I had to navigate a certain amount of bureaucracy, as with the Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte in Halle. I had to hand in my ID and was issued a visitor's badge. But once inside, the atmosphere was as relaxed as at the restaurant-café Le Syana across the street. Mme Fourment was delighted to receive me, and we had a long philosophical conversation about interpreting prehistory and translating it into fiction film. Not only was she happy to help with the project and provide feedback on my script, she also sent me home with a sizeable pile of beautiful books. And I gave her, as with all the museums, a bottle of home-brewed beer.

Returning to the Netherlands was somewhat hard. I arrived back at my studio in Utrecht deep in the night and thought to myself: I'm back to square one. My room hadn't changed, my little city hadn't changed, it was as if the journey had never happened. It was lovely to see all my friends and family again. But there had been so much momentum in the project while I was on the road, and it seemed to have come to a full stop. On top of that, I was completely broke. Everything had gone into the trip; I had borrowed money from friends along the way, and a small pile of traffic fines from Eastern Europe was waiting on the doormat (forgot to buy a vignette a couple times). And my car, after 16,000 kilometres across the continent, chose the Netherlands, just around the corner, to break down.

Now, I don't mind being poor. I'll happily eat rice and beans for months on end if it means I can realise my project. But not being able to pay the rent does generate a certain low-grade stress.

For a few weeks I was at a loss as to how best to move forward. I needed to pay rent and all other expenses, which meant working, and that would take a noticeable chunk out of the time I could dedicate to the project. Meanwhile I wanted to find an online job that would allow me to travel again. I got an opportunity at a small company that builds logistical models (long story). For which I then had to retrain... so the past few months have been busy. But I was working towards my goals and the project kept moving.

In the meantime, I have written the first draft of the screenplay and sent it around to the archaeologists. I have received wonderful responses, sometimes entire epistles, complete with useful sources, improvements to the story, and in a few cases even suggestions for filming locations for specific scenes. Support for the project keeps growing, and at the end of this month I'll be back on the road in my rusty old Ford. With any luck, the online job will get going in time, and I'll be able to travel as much as I like in the years ahead.

April 2026