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absent. some horses remain alone; others are shown formed in herds. ey appear both standing still or in motion, walking, trotting and galloping. some of the horses are as large as six feet. What all the horses have in common is how remarkably realistically they're captured, indicating the well-practiced hand coordination and interpre- tation skills of the early humans who immortalized them. ey overlay earlier red paintings, which, from dating elsewhere in the cave, might be older than 29,000 years. Curiously, the tito Bustillo horses bear a striking resemblance to the Asturcón (also known as Asturian) pony, an ancient, now-endangered native horse of the Asturias region where the cave itself is located. e breed has a heavy but smallish head with a straight profile, a curved neck, rounded barrel and deep chest. its long, even back features straight shoulders and a low-set tail, and it's most commonly either brown or black, but occasionally minimal white markings occur. e artists painted some of their horses in shades of black, violet and ochre. researchers believe they mixed their pigments from mineral deposits located in other parts of the cave, routinely preparing the col- ors close to where they were found and then carrying them to the designated gallery space. lighting for the entire process would probably have come from burn- ing torches. in addition, some of the figures appear high on the gallery wall, indicating that the painters would have used some form of ladder or scaffold. e cre- ative process took a lot of ingenuity, and perhaps even c h r o n o f h o r s e . c o m w i n t e r 2 014 89 couLd tHE LacK of Hunting scEnEs indicatE tHat HorsEs WErE indEEd rEVErEd, as somE arcHEoLogists maintain, as diVinE animaLs in tHE PaLEoLitHic PEriod? These horses— both drawn and painted—appear in a variety of poses, from profiled representations of the head and chest to fully fleshed-out figures.

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