The Myth of the Bull: Archaeology and Tradition

Abstract: In Spain, archaeology and literary texts provide us with a proof of a continuity in some manifestations where the sacredness of bulls seems evident. The religious character of bovidae undoubtedly arises from man’s intuition of a sacrality based on an image of a superior power, both physical and genetic. It has survived in Spain up to the present time, sometimes in beliefs and rituals whose roots can be easily perceived in ancestral customs, and in other instances in a more cryptic way but with characteristics that betray its linkage with the remote past.