Cave of the Bats

Located in the heart of the Geopark of the Sierras Subbeticas, within the municipality of Zuheros, 4 km from the town center. The cave is 976 m above sea level, with a touristic route of 415m, 700 steps and in its touristic visit a descent of up to 65 m deep is made. The maximum depth discovered so far is 75.5 meters. So far it is the largest cave in the province of Cordoba with more than 3,300 m topographed. It is the water that for thousands of years has been in charge of creating this cavity. To highlight the different rooms of the cave with limestone formations. The most famous formation in the Cueva de los Murciélagos is undoubtedly the one known as "El Espárrago", a stalagmite with a height of 4 meters, but the stalactite on which its growth depends measures only 10 centimeters. In the spring of 1938 a group of army officers went into the cavity for the first official exploration, where they discovered a human skeleton in one of its deepest parts. In the middle of the decade of the 40's (of the 20th century) Neolithic and Chalcolithic cave paintings, unique in the world, were found in the cave. It is in 1962 and 1969 when the first archaeological works were carried out, giving as the most notorious result, that the Andalusian Neolithic began with a millennium in advance of what until that moment was believed. From 1990 to 1993 and in 2002 the last excavations were carried out with the aim of further advancing in the history hidden in the cave and creating a small route for people who had difficulty facing the official itinerary, thus eliminating the deepest rooms of the cave. In 2018, the results of DNA tests carried out on the skeleton were obtained, showing that we are facing another important discovery of the cave, and that the human skeleton buried in the deepest part of the cave is the first farmer in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, who lived 7,245 years ago. Reservations and rates