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Body painting started sometime before people started wearing clothes. There are archaeological discoveries that incorporate markings on the cave walls where Neanderthals lived. They suggest that they were painted on the body with earth pigments, for example ocher.
According to Susanne Åkesson, a professor in the biology department at Lund University, the tradition of body painting could have developed simultaneously on different continents. We do not know when the tradition started.
In a new study, scientists have discovered that body paint, especially white-painted strips, protects skin from insect bites. This is the first study that shows that body painting has this effect.
In addition, the study highlights the reason behind the body painting of Aboriginal peoples.
Most Aboriginal communities who paint their bodies live in areas where blood flies, mosquitoes and tsetse flies abound. When these insects bite people, there is a risk of transfer of bacteria, parasites and other pathogens.
In the course of the study, scientists have recently found that zebra stripes are a security against horseflies. It is also seen that pale fur, for example on horses, can give an badurance, as opposed to dark fur. The revelation won the 2016 IgNobel Physics Prize. In the new examination, the group continued to explore and badyze plastic models whose size is indivernably identical to that of adults.
For the surveys conducted in Hungary, the specialists painted three models of plastic characters: a black, a light-striped black and a beige. They then covered the three models with a layer of insect glue. The dark model drew ten times more flies than the striped model, and the beige model attracted twice as many people as the striped model.
They also checked whether horsefly attraction varied from model to model. The results show that only women were included in the standing models, although both men and women were attracted to the supine models.
Susanne Åkesson said: "These results are consistent with previous experiments in which we have shown that humans gravitate towards water to drink and land on surfaces that reflect horizontal linear polarized light, such as signals from a surface. some water. Females that sting and suck blood from host animals respond to the same signals as males, but also to vertical light signals, such as standing patterns.
The study is published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
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