title: Genotypes of predomestic horses match phenotypes painted in Paleolithic works of cave art.
abstract: Archaeologists often argue whether Paleolithic works of art, cave paintings in particular, constitute reflections of the natural environment of humans at the time. They also debate the extent to which these paintings actually contain creative artistic expression, reflect the phenotypic variation of the surrounding environment, or focus on rare phenotypes. The famous paintings "The Dappled Horses of Pech-Merle," depicting spotted horses on the walls of a cave in Pech-Merle, France, date back ~25,000 y, but the coat pattern portrayed in these paintings is remarkably similar to a pattern known as "leopard" in modern horses. We have genotyped nine coat-color loci in 31 predomestic horses from Siberia, Eastern and Western Europe, and the Iberian Peninsula. Eighteen horses had bay coat color, seven were black, and six shared an allele associated with the leopard complex spotting (LP), representing the only spotted phenotype that has been discovered in wild, predomestic horses thus far. LP was detected in four Pleistocene and two Copper Age samples from Western and Eastern Europe, respectively. In contrast, this phenotype was absent from predomestic Siberian horses. Thus, all horse color phenotypes that seem to be distinguishable in cave paintings have now been found to exist in prehistoric horse populations, suggesting that cave paintings of this species represent remarkably realistic depictions of the animals shown. This finding lends support to hypotheses arguing that cave paintings might have contained less of a symbolic or transcendental connotation than often assumed.
authors: Research Group of Evolutionary Genetics, The Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, 10252 Berlin,  Germany.
authors: Melanie
authors: M
authors: Pruvost
authors: Rebecca
authors: R
authors: Bellone
authors: Norbert
authors: N
authors: Benecke
authors: Edson
authors: E
authors: Sandoval-Castellanos
authors: Michael
authors: M
authors: Cieslak
authors: Tatyana
authors: T
authors: Kuznetsova
authors: Arturo
authors: A
authors: Morales-Muñiz
authors: Terry
authors: T
authors: O'Connor
authors: Monika
authors: M
authors: Reissmann
authors: Michael
authors: M
authors: Hofreiter
authors: Arne
authors: A
authors: Ludwig
mesh_terms: D000483:Alleles; D000818:Animals; D001106:Archaeology / Q000379:methods*; D005060:Europe; D005602:France; D005838:Genotype; D005843:Geography; D006579:Heterozygote; D049690:History, Ancient; D006736:Horses / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology; D008957:Models, Genetic; D010641:Phenotype; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D012800:Siberia; D013030:Spain