Metrics details The extraordinary preservation of Cueva de Los Murciélagos (Albuñol Spain) provides a unique opportunity to identify the materials and the techniques involved in archery during the Early Neolithic period and two probable bowstrings have been studied trough an unprecedented multi-proxy investigation including microscopy and biomolecular methods The study has identified the oldest known sinew bowstrings the first evidence for the use of olive tree (Olea europaea) and reed (Phragmites sp.) to produce arrow shafts in prehistoric European archery and the identification of birch bark tar as a coating on the shafts The results of this study provide insights into ancient craft and adaptations to local resources in the production of these reed-shafted hardwood tipped arrows and bowstrings Their deposition in a burial cave sheds new light on the role of these artefacts in a Neolithic farming community the prevalent use of yew (Taxus baccata) wood suggests a shared technological tradition throughout Europe during this period This uniformity implies a sophisticated understanding and transmission of bow-making techniques among these Neolithic communities This diversity underscores the adaptive strategies and resourcefulness of Neolithic societies in utilising a variety of materials for their weaponry These discoveries have provided valuable insights into the diversity of raw materials used in arrow production and the associated manufacturing techniques Cordage fragments from Cueva de los Murciélagos identified as possible bowstrings (a.2.) Detail of twisted fibres; (B) CM-591b (Beta-692877) (b.2.) Detail of twisted fibres with organic material between grooves A multidisciplinary approach combining biomolecular and archaeobotanical methods has been applied to elucidate the diversity of the organic raw materials the production techniques and characteristics of these ancient projectiles Traditional identification methods and techno-morphological studies provide crucial information on the identification of woody material and the morpho-technological characteristics of these artefacts while biomolecular methods enable a more detailed understanding of the nature and properties of the amorphous substances and fibrous elements associated with the archery elements Multiphase Bayesian chronological ranges for the estimated start and end of each phase and the modelled ranges of each radiocarbon date OxCal v4.4.4 Bronk Ramsey; r:5 Atmospheric data from Reimer et al The corpus of objects studied in this research led us to classify them into two groups of wooden objects The first group includes composite arrow shafts with wooden points with wound fibres fixing the different elements The branches were debarked and polished as not cut marks or other traces were observed This group is dated to the Early Neolithic CM-1138/532, fragmented at both ends, has an overall length of 228 mm, and is a combination of a wooden arrowhead made of a twig of Salix sp. (willow) and a Phragmites sp. cane (reed) for the shaft (shaft = 82.1 mm) (Table 2; Fig. 4a narrowing to 8.4 mm near the wood attachment and tapering slightly to 8.2 mm at the end The reed and wood are secured by wound fibres fixed with an adhesive that was also found on the wooden part CM-1139/532 is a shaft made of a Phragmithes cane (Table 2) measuring 180 mm in length and 8 mm in diameter are the remains of two feathers tied with fibres while the other end is also bound with fibres This shaft is the oldest fletched arrow in European prehistory The shaft is coated with a black substance possibly indicating treatment for preservation or added functionality CM-1140 is a wooden point made with a twig of Olea europaea (olive tree) (Table 2; Fig. 4d the proximal part has a diameter ranging from 6.7 mm to 7.2 mm The segment that may have been inserted into the shaft measures 52 mm in length The tip is covered with a black substance for possible reinforcement or preservation Morphologically the fourth object is quite different SEM microphotographs of wood artefacts CM-1138/532-1 (Salix/Populus The two cord fragments are similar in morphology although they have a few breaks at the ends CM-591b is approximately 34 cm long by 3 mm in diameter This two-ply cord has a Szz twist with a closed twist angle (53º − 60º) and 2 twists per centimetre CM-P287 is a two-ply cord 59 cm long by 3 mm in diameter It also has a Szz twist with 2 twists per centimetre The addition of fibres to lengthen the cord can be seen in different spots SEM microphotographs of the cords (a) CM-591b: structure of fibres with an undulated aspect (b) CM-P287: detail of the collagen fibres S8 and table S4) showed distinct peaks at around 1630 cm-1 and 1540 cm-1 corresponding to the amide I and amide II bands These bands indicate the presence of collagen-rich tissues the absence of characteristic peaks associated with other major tissues such as prominent phosphate bands for bone or lipid bands for muscle and the comparison with modern sinew confirmed the specificity of the observed signals for sinew Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) was performed using a small sample of each cord CM-591b was identified as deriving from Capra spp. while CM-P287 exhibited peptide markers for a mixture of taxa and likely Caprinae and/or Cervidae (Supplementary Table S4 and Supplementary Fig indicating that the cord was made from the sinew of multiple species was taken from the opposite end of the cordage and analyzed via ZooMS producing a single identification of roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) An additional marker of high intensity at m/z 2115 was observed in all three samples and also at m/z 1299 CM-591b (Supplementary Fig While m/z 2115 is a known collagen type I peptide marker for certain taxa (for example the other markers present do not coincide with these taxa suggesting this marker actually represents a different potentially from a different type of collagen (such as collagen type III present in lower quantities in tendon and ligament tissues) or other proteins associated with connective tissues Chromatograms of the adhesive residue on (a) CM-1139/532 (b) CM-1140c and (c) CM-1140d with peaks consistent for birch bark tar The asterisk in CM-1139/532 corresponds to trace amounts of the following fatty acids from left to right: Tetradecanoic acid (C14:0); Pentadecanoic acid (C15:0); Heptadecanoic acid (C17:0); (9Z)-Octadec-9-enoic acid (C18:1); Nonadecanoic acid (C19:0); Heneicosanoic acid (C21:0); Tetracosanoic acid (C24:0) Three main classes of biomolecular markers were detected and identified in the three samples: triterpenoid compounds and saturated short-chain α,ω-dicarboxylic acids (diacids) The samples from the arrowhead CM-1140 and the shaft CM-1139/532 are largely dominated by the triterpenoid constituents while fatty acids and diacids are more diverse in the adhesive of CM-1139/532 than in that of CM-1140 the triterpenes constitute 81.4% of the tar and the fatty acids and diacids 18.6% the sample of tar from the tip of the arrow (sample c) is composed of 77.5% triterpenes and 22.5% fatty acids mainly represented by palmitic and stearic acids while the sample taken near the junction of the arrowhead and shaft (sample d) has a low proportion of fatty acids (3.6%) with 96.4% triterpenes (supplementary table S5 and S6) are from birch bark tar (details in the Supplementary Appendix) Most of the fatty acids probably originate from the degradation of suberin under the influence of heat (Ekman The high concentration of palmitic and stearic acids could indicate the addition of a fatty substance to the adhesive but could also result from the manipulation or use of the objects (past or recent) table S7); thus making the identifications herein of both Salix and Olea unique evidence for arrow making of this material in many regions and its advantages as an arrow make it a favoured material and it is conceivable that past populations also used it despite its lack of preservation in the archaeological record the miners who found most of the objects were not meticulous nor attentive to the material deposited in the cave and was attached with glue (boiled hooves and horns The bowstrings at Cueva de los Murciélagos could have undergone similar processes to prepare the S-twisted cords the relative absence of strong heating markers correlated with the high proportion of biomarkers in the tar is coherent with the fabrication process of a first exudation of tar While the tar from CM-1140 has fewer fatty acids thus more similar to experimental tars produced via condensation the high proportion of biomarkers and low heating markers suggest it was likely produced per descendum between the two objects but also the two samples of 1140 could be a result of anthropic alteration and post-depositional degradation Caution must be used when comparing archaeological data with experimental data we can only conclude that the production of the birch bark tar used at Cueva de los Murciélagos involved a short heating time at temperatures below 350 °C The shaft or spear dated to the Bronze Age however its composition could not be identified Raman spectroscopy could be used in the future to try to characterise this substance provided that the fluorescence phenomenon is not too strong the association of these hunting objects with human burials could point to hunting as a cultural marker of social status CM-1141) were proposed to be the remains of arrowheads and/or shafts CM-287) were found to have different morphological and technical features compared to other cordage from the site Vascular bundles are large and arranged in a distinct ring close to the outer edge of the stem The vascular bundle is composed of two large xylem vessels and phloem tissues with thick-walled sclerenchyma fibres surrounding them Small fragments of a few millimetres of fibres were sampled from the tied fibres and around 1 cm of material were recovered at the broken edges of the two cords Identification procedures of fibres collected from the artefacts at the MAN (CM-1138/532 CM-591b) and from the cord recovered during the excavation campaign in 2022 (CM-P-287) were carried out under magnifications ranging from ×50 to ×500 using the aforementioned bright-dark field Olympus BX51 microscope at the UAB Archaeobotany Lab they were studied using Scanning Electron Microscopy (Zeiss Merlin Servei de Microscòpia i Difracció de Raigs X These archaeological fibres were compared with modern sinew samples sourced from Ángel de la Llave who informed us that the sinew was obtained from horses (Equus sp) He typically purchases sinew from a traditional archery shop but also acquires materials from other sources and he could not specify the exact provenance in this case The modern sinews were processed using traditional methods of cleaning A few milligrams of each residue were sampled from CM-1138/532 adhesive from the wooden part (b) and a black residue (c) from the edge of the artefact were sampled A black coating was sampled from the reed shaft of CM-1139/532 and the other near the possible shaft attachment where the residue appeared slightly white (d) (supplementary S3) Although lipid analysis is a destructive technique careful sample management was employed to maximize the analytical yield from the available material Lipids were extracted following a published solvent extraction method adapted to adhesives (Rageot et al The samples were sonicated twice for 15 min in a ratio of 2–3 mg/mL of dichloromethane (DCM A volume of 100 µL of the resulting supernatant was recovered and evaporated under a flow of nitrogen at 40 °C O-bis(trimethylsilyl)trifluoroacetamide) was added to the dried residues and heated to 70 °C for 1 h to derivatize the hydroxyl groups The lipid extract was then solubilized in 100 µL of DCM with an internal standard 1 µL of sample was injected with a blank control into a Shimadzu GC2010Plus mass spectrometer (CEPAM France) equipped with a splitless injector (purge flow of 2.0 mL/min and split ratio of 3.0) A 30 m length DB-5MS (30 m × 0.25 mm i.d.; 0.25 μm film thickness) non-polar capillary column was used with helium as the carrier gas and programmed at 3mL/min The ion source temperature was 200 °C and the temperature of the transfer line between the GC and the MS was set at 280 °C The temperature rise programme was as follows: from 50 °C Mass spectra were acquired using electron ionisation at 70 eV MALDI-ToF-MS and GC-MS data analysed during the current survey will be available from the ZENODO repository (https://zenodo.org) Additional data related to this paper may be requested from the authors on request Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to I.B Fabrication et Utilisation Au Néolithique (Éditions du musée Schwab Pfeil Und Bogen: Von Der Altsteinzeit Bis Zum Mittelalter (Verlag Angelika Hörnig Neolithic and bronze age archery equipment from alpine ice-patches: a review on components The origins of lithic projectile point technology: Evidence from Africa Reconstructing projectile technology during the Pre-pottery Neolithic B in the Levant: An integrated approach to large tanged points from Halula Osseous projectile points from the Swiss neolithic: Taphonomy The spread of agriculture in Iberia through approximate bayesian computation and neolithic projectile tools Characterizing prehistoric archery: Technical and functional analyses of the neolithic bows from la Draga (NE Iberian Peninsula) La caza en El yacimiento lacustre de la Draga (Banyoles-Girona) In III Congreso Del Neolítico en la Península Ibérica (Universidad de Cantabria L’archerie à la transition fin du Néolithique/Age du Bronze en Europe occidentale (Université Toulouse le Mirail-Toulouse II Muerte Y violencia en una comunidad del litoral catalán durante El tercer milenio cal BC In III Congreso Del Neolítico en la Península Ibérica (ed Arias Cabal Projectile points as signs of violence in collective burials during the 4th and the 3rd millennia cal BC in the North-East of the Iberian Peninsula An arrowhead injury in a late Neolithic/Early chalcolithic human cuneiform from the rockshelter of La Peña De Marañón ( Large-scale violence in late neolithic Western Europe based on expanded skeletal evidence from San Juan ante Portam Latinam Skull-cup and human bone manipulation in Cueva De El Toro (early neolithic Arrowheads as indicators of interpersonal violence and group identity among the Neolithic Pitted Ware hunters of southwestern Scandinavia Archery by the apaches–implications of using the bow and arrow in hunter-gatherer communities Cetwińska, A. et al. 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oxidation products in archaeological ceramic vessels Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 265 Production method of the Königsaue birch tar documents cumulative culture in neanderthals Identifying palaeolithic birch tar production techniques: Challenges from an experimental biomolecular approach Complicating the debate: Evaluating the potential of gas-chromatography-mass spectrometry for differentiating prehistoric aceramic tar production techniques Download references We are grateful with Eduardo Galán Domingo and Ruth Maicas Ramos curators of the Museo Arqueológico Nacional (Madrid) and the Director of the Museo Arqueológico y Etnográfico (Granada) Manuel Ramos Lizana for permission to study the material and undertake sampling We also thank the fieldwork team: Antonio Peralta Andrea Salamanca Casuso and Francisca Fernández Castaño the authors would like to thank Arnaud Mazuy from CEPAM as well as Cristina Navarro Senent and Martí de Cabo Jaume from UAB’s Servei de Microscòpia and Servei de Difracció de Raigs-X for their invaluable technical support.This research has been carried out within the framework of different research projects: ‘De los museos al territorio: actualizando el estudio de la Cueva de los Murciélagos de Albuñol (Granada)’ (MUTERMUR) (Referencia CM/JIN/2021-009) financed by the program of Young Researchers of Comunidad de Madrid (directed by F.M.S as the principal investigator); ‘The organic chemistry and molecular biology of archaeological artefacts’ (ChemArch) funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under ChemArch grant agreement No 956351 (I.B as beneficiary); Grant CNS2023-144343 funded by MICIU/AEI /10.13039/501100011033 and European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR (M.M.S is funded by Ramon y Cajal fellowship (RYC2019-028346) and Consolidación Investigadora (CNS2022-136039) by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MCIN) is ICREA academia researcher and member of the research group TEDAS 2021-SGR 00190 founded by the AGAUR This work contributes to the EarlyFoods research group (SGR-Cat 2021 00527).The fieldworks at the site during the years 2022-2023 has had permission from Delegación Territorial de la Junta de Andalucía de Cultura y Patrimonio Histórico de Granada (EXP: BC.03.143/22 14100 and EXP: BC.03.136/23 15490) Instituto de Ciencias del Patrimonio (INCIPIT) Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA-UAB) All authors have reviewed and contributed to the manuscript and all approve of its submission to this journal The authors declare no competing interests Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material Supporting information 1: Site description; Datation and Bayesian modelling; Microscopical and SEM photographs of the bowstring; SEM-EDS results; FTIR results; Lipid compounds identified and their relative proportions; ZooMS spectra; Table of neolithic arrowshafts from other archaeological contexts Download citation DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-77224-w Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: a shareable link is not currently available for this article Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science An eight-year-old boy has drowned in a natural bathing spot in Albuñol (Granada province) in Andalucía where swimming is prohibited The emergency services sent to the area after the alarm was raised could do nothing to save the young victim's life This was reported by SUR's sister newspaper Ideal de Granada and confirmed by the mayor of the municipality She announced that the local government team has decided to decree three days of mourning in the town The deceased child was with his family in the area known as El Río a recreational area with a picnic spot and a pool formed by the river that runs through the town where the residents of Albuñol and the surrounding area have "always" bathed the mayor pointed out that the area is clearly signposted as "not suitable for bathing" Comentar es una ventaja exclusiva para registrados led by researchers from the Universidad de Alcalá (UAH) and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) has discovered and analyzed the first direct evidence of basketry among hunter-gatherer societies and early farmers in southern Europe in the Cueva de los Murciélagos of Albuñol (Granada published in the prestigious journal Science Advances analyzes 76 objects made of organic materials (wood reed and esparto) discovered during 19th century mining activities in the Granada cave The researchers studied the raw materials and technology and carried out carbon-14 dating which revealed that the set dates to the early and middle Holocene period This is the first direct evidence of basketry made by Mesolithic hunter-gatherer societies in southern Europe and a unique set of other organic tools associated with early Neolithic farming communities As researcher of the Prehistory Department of the University of Alcalá Francisco Martínez Sevilla explains ”the new dating of the esparto baskets from the Cueva de los Murciélagos of Albuñol opens a window of opportunity to understanding the last hunter-gatherer societies of the early Holocene The quality and technological complexity of the basketry makes us question the simplistic assumptions we have about human communities prior to the arrival of agriculture in southern Europe This work and the project that is being developed places the Cueva de los Murciélagos as a unique site in Europe to study the organic materials of prehistoric populations” Cueva de los Murciélagos is located on the coast of Granada to the south of the Sierra Nevada and 2 kilometers from the town of Albuñol The cave opens on the right side of the Barranco de las Angosturas at an altitude of 450 meters above sea level and about 7 kilometers from the current coastline It is one of the most emblematic prehistoric archaeological sites of the Iberian Peninsula due to the rare preservation of organic materials which until this study had only been attributed to the Neolithic The objects made of perishable materials were discovered by the mining activities of the 19th century and were documented and recovered by Manuel de Góngora y Martínez later becoming part of the first collections of the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid co-author of the work and researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona “the esparto grass objects from Cueva de los Murciélagos are the oldest and best-preserved set of plant fiber materials in southern Europe so far known The technological diversity and the treatment of the raw material documented demonstrates the ability of prehistoric communities to master this type of craftsmanship Only one type of technique related to hunter-gatherers has been identified technological and treatment range of esparto grass was extended during the Neolithic from 7,200 to 6,200 years before the present” The work is part of the project “De los museos al territorio: actualizando el estudio de la Cueva de los Murciélagos de Albuñol (Granada)” (MUTERMUR) which has been funded by the Community of Madrid and the Universidad de Alcalá The objective of this project is the holistic study of the site and its material record applying the latest archaeometric techniques and generating quality scientific data The project also included the collaboration of the National Archaeological Museum the Archaeological and Ethnological Museum of Granada the City Council of Albuñol and the owners of the cave “The results of this work and the finding of the oldest basketry in southern Europe give more meaning to the phrase written by Manuel de Góngora in his work Prehistoric Antiquities of Andalusia (1868): ‘the now forever famous Cueva de los Murciélagos’” In addition to Francisco Martínez Sevilla and María Herrero Otal specialists from different disciplines such as Prehistory Carpology or Anthracology participated in this interdisciplinary study: María Martín-Seijo (Universidad de Cantabria); Jonathan Santana (Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria); José A Lozano Rodríguez (Oceanographic Center of the Canary Islands); Ruth Maicas Ramos (National Archaeological Museum); Miriam Cubas Primitiva Bueno Ramírez and Rodrigo de Balbín Behrmann (Universidad de Alcalá); Anna Homs; Rafael M Martínez Sánchez (Universidad de Córdoba) Ingrid Bertin (Université Côte d'Azur); Antonio M Álvarez-Valero (Universidad de Salamanca); Leonor Peña Chocarro (Instituto de Historia Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas); Javier L Rubén Pardo Martínez and Mercedes Murillo Barroso (Universidad de Granada); Eva Fernández Domínguez (Durham University); Manuel Altamirano García (Universidad a Distancia); Mercedes Iriarte Cela (Centro Tecnológico y de Investigación SDLE); Carmen Alfaro Giner (Universitat de València); Antoni Palomo Pérez and Raquel Piqué Huerta (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) 10.1126/sciadv.adi3055 The earliest basketry in southern Europe: Hunter-gatherer and farmer plant-based technology in Cueva de los Murciélagos (Albuñol) are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system Copyright © 2025 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) the residents and holidaymakers of Albuñol on the coast of Granada province are enjoying another summer on Pozuelo beach that they had so longed for which a few years ago was occupied by greenhouses and plastic sheeting has been returned to a natural space that had been occupied for years by crops The coastal town which was severely affected by the 1973 flood that left more than forty people dead and devastated numerous farms was forced to rebuild its economy with greenhouses While neighbouring towns opted for tourism The traces of this tragedy lasted for decades The demand for land regeneration became a priority for the town and more than forty years later the central government's ministry for ecological transition began to remove the greenhouses on the coastal strip despite facing resistance from the farmers who made their living from them the 22 hectares of beach had been completely cleared environmental regeneration was still pending and the beach still could not compete with other tourist destinations who was born in Granada but a summer resident of El Pozuelo for 37 years "This was all greenhouses and the plastics that were discarded ended up in the sea," he says as he recalls the large amount of rubbish that was generated on the coast who have witnessed agriculture "stomping" along the coast for decades this regeneration represents an opportunity to turn the town into a tourist destination Manuel hopes that the town will not lose its quiet you can combine agriculture with tourism," he says used to seeing their beach covered in plastic the recovery of the coastline has been a "prize" after years of struggle He also points out the lack of basic services such as supermarkets and beach bars which limits the tourist potential of this coastal area another local resident who is strolling along the shore and enjoying the few remaining days of summer they have even put up a net to play volleyball but there are no bars" After twenty years of insistence and numerous meetings with different governments managed to get the regeneration project off the ground Her position at the time was clear: the regeneration of the beach represents an opportunity for Albuñol to develop a new economy based on tourism which will allow it to aspire to a more sustainable future Sánchez agreed with the central department responsible for Spain's coast known as 'Costas' to carry out three key projects for the transformation of the area: breakwaters in El Pozuelo (445,000 euros) and La Rábita (3.2 million euros) and the environmental regeneration of the 22 hectares of coastline The aim was to protect the town centres and decontaminate a beach that for decades was exposed to plastics and chemical products from greenhouses First teamCarlos Puga renews until 2026 Málaga Club de Fútbol and the player from Albuñol renew their commitment for the next two seasons, until the 2025/2026 campaign. Copy linkCarlos Francisco Puga Medina (26/11/2000 - Albuñol Granada) will remain linked to the Malaguista entity for two more seasons The full-back joined the Malaguista squad during the last winter transfer window as a free agent after leaving Club Atlético de Madrid 'B' The player from Albuñol demonstrates great physical ability high speed and attacking vocation from the right wing Carlos has been an extraordinary resource both in attack and defence for the second round of the 23/24 season his participation in the four games of the promotion playoffs to LaLiga Hypermotion stands out Málaga CF extends its relationship with one of the protagonists of the recent promotion to the Second Division who provides great versatility on the right wing This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page A 58-year-old woman was found dead early this Monday morning in an irrigation pond in the Granada province municipality of Albuñol At 5.20am the Guardia Civil discovered the body of a person in an irrigation pond located next to kilometre 23 of the A-345 road and called in the fire brigade from Motril and health workers which was in a concrete irrigation pool some four metres deep although at the time it was only at half of its capacity Sources from the Guardia Civil reported that the woman had been missing since Sunday afternoon although no further details of the circumstances of the incident have been revealed The Guardia Civil has arrested the tenant of a greenhouse in Albuñol in Andlaucía's Granada province as the alleged perpetrator of a smuggling offence after discovering that he was hiding a 'narco boat' inside the facility Police discovered the vessel on 23 April in a greenhouse in Pozuelo-Albuñol located next to the old N-340 and by the sea The officers were suspicious that the entire perimeter of the greenhouse was closed with raffia fabric and polycarbonate sheets that prevented them from seeing what was inside they discovered the 'narco boat' on a trailer 18 empty fuel bottles and a backhoe loader whose shovel had been modified to move the trailer with the boat Guardia Civil investigators were able to verify that the greenhouse did not house any plants so it was specifically intended to store this type of vessel used in drug trafficking in the Mediterranean The boat is an eight-metre long semi-rigid craft with a 350 horsepower outboard engine and with no registration or supporting documentation The size and power of this boat found by the Guardia Civil in Motril means that it could carry up to eight tonnes of cargo which would enable the vessel to make trips with large quantities of drugs The engine alone is worth more than 30,000 euros on the market it was confirmed that the premises were rented by the owner to a third party who has been arrested and charged with a smuggling offence the vessel has been seized and deposited in a judicial warehouse in Almeria province Police officers discovered that the ground between the beach and the greenhouse had been removed to facilitate the movement of the boat both to land and to launch it into the sea The investigation is still open and investigators have not ruled out the possibility of finding more people connected to the operation