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France's Pech Merle cave hand stencils surrounding the 'Spotted Horses' mural.
Archeologists say the hand stencils created by ancient Europeans were mostly artworks imprinted by female members of prehistoric societies.

Measuring and analyzing the hand stencils surrounding the famous 'Spotted Horses' mural in France's 25,000-year-old Pech Merle cave, Pennsylvania State University archaeologists found that most of them belonged to females.

"Even a superficial examination of published photos suggested to me that there were lots of female hands there," National Geographic quoted archaeologist Dean Snow as saying.

The 28,000-year-old hand stencils of Spain's El Castillo cave and the late Paleolithic ones in France's Gargas cave also yielded the same result.

"We don't know what the roles of artists were in Upper Paleolithic society generally," said Snow. "But it's a step forward to be able to say that a strong majority of them were women."

Stenciling, painting and chipping hand imprints onto rock walls started at least 30,000 years ago among humans.