World's Oldest Known Cave Painting of Animals Found in Indonesia
By Jodie Costello
Australian archaeologists have located the world’s oldest known cave painting of animals on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Painted more than 45,500 years ago, it depicts a 136 cm warty pig sketched in red ochre pigment. At its rump are two human handprints produced by spraying the wall with pigment and spit – a possible source for DNA extraction. The warty pig appears to be watching an interaction between two other pigs, who have suffered from extensive damage. According to Matthew MacEgan, the Indonesian finds highlight that both Asian and European peoples living in the Pleistocene Eurasian world – more commonly referred to as the Ice Age – produced stylistically similar rock art during the same period. How did such similar motifs, pigment use, and placements occur in such disparate communities? It is a question archaeologists, anthropologists, historians and scientists are only beginning to answer.
Credit: AA Oktaviana
Basran Burhan, a PhD student at Griffith University, Australia, made the discovery while investigating Leang Tedongnge – an archaeological site on the southern tip of Sulawesi. The island teems with over 300 cave drawings, including the second oldest figurative cave painting of an ancient warty pig hunt.
Adam Brumm, the first author of a study analysing the find, writes that “they’re [the warty pigs] very, very, small…but these ancient artist portrayed them with such resplendent fatness which I imagined was something to do with their interest in killing the largest and fattest pigs they could find.”
Credit: Maxime Aubert
Co-author Maxime Aubert highlights that it is important not to confuse the Sulawesi pig with the oldest known art. Such a title is designated to a 73,000-year-old hashtag-like doodle found in South Africa. However, Aubert told Scientific American that the dating is preliminary due to the small sample size. As a result, the rock art may be 60,000 to 65,000 years old.
April Nowell, a Paleolithic archaeologist at the University of Victoria, emphasises that the Sulawesi pig will not only change conversations surrounding Neolithic cave art but art more generally. “It really erodes that idea of Europe being the finishing school of human evolution,” she commented when asked about the importance of finding such a painting in Indonesia. Experts hope that the find will not only expand the understanding of figural murals but also the independent evolution of Southeast Asian culture.
The limestone karst valley in which Leang Tedongnge is located. Credit: David P. McGahan.
Bibliography
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