Cacín River


The Cacín River is a river in Andalusia, Spain. It is supplied by streams flowing north from the Sierra de Almijara and Sierra de Tejeda into the Depression of Granada.
The river originates in the Los Bermejales Reservoir, and flows north to join the Genil river.
In its upper reaches it runs through a deep gorge that holds traces of Paleolithic human occupation.

Geological history

In the latest Tortonian and the middle and late Turolian the Granada basin was an endorheic basin.
Rivers flowed from the east and southwest into a central lake with no exit.
During the Pliocene, the western part of the basin was drained by the paleo-Cacín river system, which flowed to the north and then left the basin to the west.
Pliocene sediments exposed in the northwest of the Granada basin were washed down by the Cacín from the Alpujarride reliefs of the Almijara/Tejeda massif.
The eastern part of the basin contained by the Alhambra system, or paleo-Genil system, which was fed by the mountains to the east and fed a small endorheic lake in the north.
In the latest Pliocene or earliest Pleistocene, the Genil river changed course to flow west, where it joined the paleo-Cacin system, and the basin became completely exorheic.
Before this period the basin had been collecting sediments. Afterwards the main pattern has been erosion.

Route

The Cacín River forms in what is now the Los Bermejales Reservoir, where several streams from the Sierras of Tejeda, Almijara and Alhama Natural Park converge.
It flows north through a narrow canyon known as the Tajos de los Bermejales, where it has drops of.
The Cacín river irrigates the lands of the west of the Vega de Granada comarca.
It joins the Genil to the southwest of Villanueva Mesía.

Tajos de los Bermejales

The Tajos de los Bermejales gorge is in the comarca de Alhama, in the municipality of Arenas del Rey.
It extends from the Bermejales dam to what is called the Roman bridge, although it was built in the 1940s.
It is accessible through a difficult walking trail that includes sections of hanging bridges, ladders and support ropes.
The river dug the gorge through sandstones, clays and soft conglomerates in the Quaternary era.
The canyon walls are home to many species of bird, including raptors such as common kestrel, accipiter and Eurasian eagle-owl, colonies of western jackdaw, rock dove, rock thrush, wheatear, bee-eater, barn swallow and Eurasian crag martin.
The Southeastern Spanish ibex may also be seen in the gorge.

Neolithic inhabitants

people lived in the canyon 5,000 years ago, sheltering under its overhanging walls and using the river as source of food.
There are traces of these early settlers on the canyon walls about above the present river level.
Some of the walls they built to enclose the cavities in the canyon wall are still visible.
At that time the canyon was not so deep, and stairways and ladders were used to reach the dwellings, which were built high for defensive reasons.
A clay vessel known as the Olla de Cacín was found in the river bed and is preserved in the National Archaeological Museum, Madrid.
It is the most southern example of Cardium pottery in Europe.