Upper Palaeolithic cave painting of a camel found in Ural Mountains

An image of a two-humped camel has been discovered in the Kapova cave in Southern Ural Mountains. The painting is preliminarily estimated to be between 14500-37700 years old.

Ancient rock art of a camel (by Vladislav Zhitenev & Lomonosov Moscow State University)
The Kapova cave is located in Bashkiria, 400 km away from Ufa, on the territory of Shulgan-Tash nature reserve. The cave is one of the most famous sites containing Palaeolithic cave art. The wall paintings were created about 17 000 – 19 000 years ago. The find was made by Eudald Guillamet, a well-known restorative specialist from Andorra, who was invited by the State Office of Protection of Cultural Heritage of Bashkiria to clean the cave of graffiti. According to the researchers camels couldn’t live in the area where the find was made, therefore the artist or artists could migrate over long distances. The age of the image was established by uranium-thorium dating of the calcite deposits on which the image is painted. People living in the Southern Urals during the Ice Age painted not only the images of horses, bisons, mammoths, and woolly rhinoceroses that were widespread in European caves, but representations of the local fauna as well. In the upcoming months archaeologists from Moscow State University will continue researching Palaeolithic art in the Kapova and Ignatievskaya caves.

(after PhysOrg, Vladislav Zhitenev & Lomonosov Moscow State University)

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