Archaeologists in the northwestern province of Gansu discovered a 3,000-year-old pot with a design showing a scene of horse-pasturing in Minqin County recently.

The painted design shows a man herding eight horses. Some of these horses are bucking and some stand quietly; some have tails and some do not. All of the horses have large buttocks, slender waists and thin legs.

Surrounded by the eight horses, the wide-shouldered, slender-waisted man is in a long gown. His physique and dress are quite similar to those of ethnic people living in the horse-taming area, said Wang Haidong, Vice Chairman of the Gansu Provincial Painted Pottery Research Institute.

The pot, 22 centimeters high and 24 centimeters in diameter, has a pair of symmetrical handles on each side of its body and a sunken bottom.

It's body is painted with complicated pictures and images, and alternating black and red broken lines. The most eye-catching of these pictures is the image of the man and the horses.

This is the first time that ancient painted pottery with a horse-pasturing picture has been discovered in China, Wang said, adding that the picture indicates that horses were domesticated in China as long as 3,000 years ago.

Previously, only ancient painted pottery with images of donkeys, sheep, dogs and pigs had been found in China.

The images of horses and drawing lines on the picture are similar to those from the Tang Dynasty (618-907), indicating that horse drawing skills used in the Tang Dynasty might have been borrowed from ancient pottery painting, said Wang.

Wang said discovery of the horse-pasturing picture was significant not only in the study of development of human beings and painted pottery, but also in the study of the history of traditional Chinese painting.

The discovery provides support for the idea that traditional Chinese painting originates from patterns on ancient painted pottery, Wang noted.
 
(Xinhua News Agency September 13, 2004)