Spotted Horses May Have Roamed Europe 25,000 Years Ago 87
sciencehabit writes with an excerpt from Science: "About 25,000 years ago, humans began painting a curious creature on the walls of European caves. Among the rhinos, wild cattle, and other animals, they sketched a white horse with black spots. Although such horses are popular breeds today, scientists didn't think they existed before humans domesticated the species about 5000 years ago. Now, a new study of prehistoric horse DNA concludes that spotted horses did indeed roam ancient Europe, suggesting that early artists may have been reproducing what they saw rather than creating imaginary creatures."
Re:Cavemen are not dumb. (Score:2, Interesting)
That "discovery" is part of our historic background and social evolution. We have have rediscovered the knowledge stored in the East (they transcribed the Greek wisdom and had mathematics and astronomy) with the crusades giving us "Enlightenment" and later making knowledge accessible. The desire to make knowledge easily accessible produced the bookpress. Without the ability to write, all that had no purpose or maybe some people going around singing about.
Also, don't judge a fish's intelligence by its ability to mount a mountain; Cavemen knew how to operate in a world that we cannot even phantom, not by choice but by necessity. But we operate in a world a cavemen wouldn't be able to comprehend either, and we use our tools by necessity to come to a simular result (we live, eat and play).