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Palaeolithic cave-painters were 'realists'

Ancient horses Ancient cave painters who drew spotted horses were depicting what they saw around them and were not, as often believed, being abstract or symbolic, suggests a new study.

An international team of researchers report their work this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The spotted horses depicted in some Palaeolithic cave paintings have generated much debate among archaeologist, with some arguing the paintings are symbolic, not a depiction of what is really there.

One prominent example is the 25,000-year-old Palaeolithic cave painting, "The Dappled Horses of Pech-Merle" in France, showing white horses with black spots.

"The spotted horses are featured in a frieze which includes hand outlines and abstract patterns of spots," says Professor Terry O'Connor, from the University of York's Department of Archaeology.

"The juxtaposition of elements has raised the question of whether the spotted pattern is in some way symbolic or abstract, especially since many researchers considered a spotted coat phenotype unlikely for Palaeolithic horses," he says.

"However, our research removes the need for any symbolic explanation of the horses. People drew what they saw."

By analysing bones and teeth from more than 30 ancient horses in Siberia and Europe dating back as many as 35,000 years, O'Connor and colleagues found that six shared a gene associated with a type of leopard spotting seen in modern horses.

Additionally, 18 of the horses had a genetic variation for bay coat colour, while seven had a black coat colour variant.

Until now, scientists only had DNA evidence of monochrome horses, such as bay and black, with no evidence for white spotted patterns.

The researchers conclude that all of the horse colours readily distinguishable in cave paintings have now been found to exist in pre-historic horse populations.

The cave paintings of horses may be more realistic and less symbolic or fantastic than often supposed, they say.

The research team was led by Dr Melanie Pruvost of the Department of Evolutionary Genetics at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research and the Department of Natural Sciences at the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin.

Scientists from Britain, Mexico, the United States, Spain and Russia helped with the genotyping and analysis of the results.

"We are just starting to have the genetic tools to access the appearance of past animals and there are still a lot of question marks and phenotypes for which the genetic process has not yet been described," says Pruvost.

"However, we can already see that this kind of study will greatly improve our knowledge about the past."