Cave Paintings of Spotted Horses Were Reality-Based
A DNA analysis suggests that the iconic spotted horses drawn in Pech-Merle weren't the product of an artist's imagination but based on what they saw outside their cave.
The famed prehistoric paintings of spotted horses found in caves throughout southern France are based in reality, according to DNA analysis that suggests spotted horses were far more common back then. The cave paintings, dating back some 25,000 years, depict horses in various colours and curiously, spots. The spotted horses found in the famous Pech-Merle cave had long been thought to be the product of an artist's out-sized imagination, but the analysis of the DNA of 31 horses that lived thousands of years ago showed that six of them carried a gene mutation that would have led to the spotted, or "leopard" coats. British geneticists determined that only three kinds of coats existed back then – spotted, black, and brown. Those are the three coats depicted in cave drawings across Europe as well, leading the team to conclude that the earliest of European artists were more likely realists – like Da Vinci or Rembrandt – than impressionists or expressionists. That the horses reflected real life suggests that the other drawings, such as those of lions, mammoths, and other ice age creatures, were similarly based on real-life encounters.
