The comparison of five hundred rock paintings in the Tassili-n-Ajjer with present-day animal husbandry shows that the polymorphic coats of neolithic cattle were most of them depicted realistically. In other words, few are imagined. We thus dispose of new spatial and chronological markers for pluri-millennium cattle coat evolution patterns. This observation raises questions in relation not only to the status of painters, but also to husbandry strategies and social relations between 4000 and 2000 BCE.
