Ancient history of flatfish research Rüdiger Berghahn a, ⁎, Floris Pieter Bennema b a Umweltbundesamt, Versuchsfeld Marienfelde, Schichauweg 58, 14057 Berlin, Germany b Vincent van Goghstraat 88, 8932 LK, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands abstract article info Article history: Received 16 November 2011 Received in revised form 29 February 2012 Accepted 1 March 2012 Available online 13 March 2012 Keywords: Flatfish Systematics Ecology Fisheries Rockart History Owing to both their special appearance and behavior flatfish have attracted the special attention of people since ages. The first records of humans having been in touch with flatfish date back to the Stone Age about 15,000 years B.C. Detailed descriptions were already given in the classical antiquity and were taken up 1400 years later in the Renaissance by the first ichthyologists, encyclopédists, and also by practical men. This was more than 200 years before a number of common flatfish species were given their scientific names by Linnaeus in 1758. Besides morphology, remarkable and sometimes amusing naturalistic observa- tions and figures are bequeathed. Ancient history of flatfish research is still a wide and open array. Examples are presented how the yield of information and interpretation from these times increases with interdisciplin- ary cooperation including archeologists, zoologists, ichthyologists, historians, art historians, fisheries and fishery biologist. The timeline of this contribution ends with the start of modern fishery research at the end of the 19th century in the course of the rapidly increasing exploitation of fish stocks. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The 1st International Symposium on Flatfish Ecology was held in 1990. Since then, flatfish researchers all over the world keep asking themselves every 3 years ‘Where do we go in flatfish research?’ (Rijnsdorp et al., 1995). However, it is also important to see, where you come from. The need of linking the history to the present has also been emphasized and documented by the ICES Study Group on the History of Fish and Fisheries (SGHIST, http://www.ices.dk/indexfla. asp, last accessed February 2012), which emerged from a corresponding ICES workshop held in 2008. The first to address this issue for flatfish was Robin Gibson in the chapter entitled ‘A brief history of flatfish research’ in his book ‘Flatfishes’ (Gibson, 2005). He mentioned Linné, but put the focus on the time from the end of the 19th century onwards, when the first detailed contributions to modern flatfish research were given by scientists like Gunder Mathiesen Dannevig (1841–1911) and Ernest William Lyons Holt (1864–1922). In contrast, this paper starts from the very roots and ends where Gibson (2005) started. 2. Stone Age Several hundred thousands of up to 40,000 year old cave paintings and carvings have been found all over the world (Hainzl, 2004). The background of this early and highly developed art is still under scientific debate. The interpretations go from ‘I was here’ tags to rituals with the latter being to more likely one. Paintings and carvings of fish are rare. Nevertheless, there are flatfish among these. In total 9 were found in the caves ‘Mas-d'Azil’, ‘Marsoulas’, and ‘Lespugue les Boeufs’ (all in the south of France) and ‘Altxerri’ and ‘La Pileta’ (in the north and the south of Spain). They were analyzed in detail by the archeologist Pierre Citerne and the ichthyologist Bruno Chanet (Citerne and Chanet, 2005). The oldest paintings from about 15,000–8000 years B.C. (Fig. 1) were found in the Cave of Pileta close to Ronda (Malaga) in the south of Spain (http://www.cuevadelapileta.org/textos_archivos/introart.html, last accessed February 2012). It is important to note, that the time esti- mate has to be treated with caution, since aging of cave art is delicate and still needs radiocarbon validation in this case. The most famous out of the 4 more than 1 m long flatfish paintings in this cave, ‘El Gran Pez Negro’ (Great Black Fish, Fig. 1), measures 1.6 m in total length. This would be the size of a halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus), if the art- ist was not driven by wishful thinking. Both eyes are on one side. Dorsal and anal fins are very long as in flatfish. The terminal mouth is typical for Pleuronectiformes rather than Soleidae. It is right-eyed which taxo- nomically excludes Scophthalmidae and Bothidae (cp. Hensley, 1997). The caudal fin is very different from flatfish and looks more like barbe. Nevertheless, it has been suggested by Chanet and Moussu (2002) to depict a flounder (Platichthys flesus) as already suggested by Breuil et al. (1915). In his detailed analysis 3 years later, Chanet came to the same conclusion, but his co-author Citerne thought that greater preci- sion than Pleuronectiformes was impossible. P. flesus is a common spe- cies along the coast and in the estuaries of the Iberian Peninsula. The maximum length for European flounder is 50 cm and specimens longer than 30 cm are rare (Muus and Dahlström, 1973). The problem in this particular case is that the painting might be a conglomerate of different Journal of Sea Research 75 (2013) 3–7 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: ruediger.berghahn@uba.de (R. Berghahn). 1385-1101/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.seares.2012.03.001 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Journal of Sea Research journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/seares