Beijing, May 24, 2017: Archaeologists in China's Inner Mongolia region recently found cave painting of human hand prints that they estimate to date back to the Palaeolithic Era, an official said on Wednesday.It has been proposed that the painting in Alxa Right Banner was part of a primitive religious ritual, Xinhua news agency reported.

The new discovery will be used to inform research into the ancient people who once lived in the region, local cultural relic bureau director Fan Rongnan said.

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The painting was composed of 14 hand prints of a brownish red hue, the colouring made from a combination of germanium powder, animal blood and water.

It was dispensed into bone-blow pipes and applied to the cave walls in this manner, according to Fan.

So far more than 30,000 collections of cliff paintings have been found in Alxa Right Banner, offering precious material for Chinese archaeological and anthropological research.

Hand-print cliff paintings have been discovered in Xinjiang Uygur region, Ningxia Hui region, Yunnan province and Inner Mongolia region. (IANS)