The Segura River carved the Almadenes gorge over two million years, slicing through Jurassic limestone to create a canyon that drops 150 metres below the Murcian plateau. The gorge shelters one of Europe's densest concentrations of Neolithic rock art — more than forty painted and engraved panels distributed across eleven caves and rock shelters, most reachable only by water. Archaeologists date the earliest motifs to 5000 BCE, when pastoral communities used the canyon as a seasonal refuge and ceremonial corridor. The art depicts schematic human figures, solar symbols, and geometric patterns executed in red ochre, a pigment ground from haematite deposits still visible in the canyon's upper strata. Today the canyon forms the core of the Almadenes Protected Landscape, a 1,772-hectare reserve designated in 2002 to safeguard both cultural heritage and riparian ecosystems. The reserve supports Europe's second-largest colony of griffon vultures — more than 120 breeding pairs nest on the limestone ledges between March and September — alongside Egyptian vultures, Bonelli's eagles, and peregrine falcons. The river corridor sustains endemic Iberian fish species, European otters, and seasonal populations of migratory waterfowl. Calasparra almadenes canyon rafting excursions operate under strict permit quotas to minimize disturbance to nesting raptors and preserve the fragile painted surfaces. The canyon's cultural layer extends beyond the Neolithic. Roman engineers tunnelled a 400-metre aqueduct through the western canyon wall in the first century CE, diverting water to irrigate the Cieza plains. Medieval watermills cling to the gorge's southern entry, their stone channels still intact. The town of Calasparra, perched on the canyon's northern rim, built its economy on rice cultivation — the dry-farmed arroz de Calasparra holds Protected Designation of Origin status and thrives in the microclimate created by the gorge's thermal inversion. Modern rafting routes follow the same thirteen-kilometre corridor that Neolithic communities navigated in reed boats, passing beneath the Cueva del Puerto's cathedral-scale chamber and the Abrigo de los Grajos, where a six-metre frieze of dancers stretches across a south-facing overhang. The canyon remains roadless; all access is on foot or by river, preserving the spatial isolation that made it a refuge across eight millennia.