Scientists have discovered an artwork on the ceiling of a limestone cave on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island that shows three human-like figures interacting with a wild pig. Scientists have found that it is the world’s oldest, reliably known cave painting, dating back at least 51,200 years.
Researchers have used a new scientific approach to determine the minimum age of a newly-revealed painting inside the Layang Karumpuang cave in the Maros-Pangkep region of South Sulawesi province. They used lasers to date a type of crystal called calcium carbonate that forms naturally on top of the painting.
“This method is a significant improvement over other methods and will revolutionise the dating of rock art around the world,” said Maxime Aubert, an expert in archaeology at Griffith University in Australia and one of the leaders of the study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The scene depicts a 36-inch by 15-inch (92 cm by 38 cm) pig standing upright alongside three smaller human-like figures, painted in the same shade of dark red. There are other images of pigs in the cave.
The researchers interpreted the painting as a narrative scene, which they said is the oldest known evidence of storytelling in art.
“The three human-like figures and the pig figure were not clearly depicted separately in different parts of the rock art panel,” said Griffith University archaeologist Adam Brumm, one of the other leaders of the study.
“Rather, the placement of the figures relative to one another – how they’re positioned relative to one another – and the way they’re interacting is clearly intentional, and it clearly conveys a sense of action. Something is happening between these figures. A story is being told. Obviously, we don’t know what that story was,” Brumm added.
The researchers used the same dating method to re-evaluate the age of another Sulawesi cave painting from a site called Leung Bulu’ Sipong 4, which also depicts a narrative scene, this time with partly human, partly animal figures hunting pigs and dwarf buffalo. It turned out to be at least 48,000 years old, which is 4,000 years earlier than previously estimated.
“We humans define ourselves as a species that tells stories, and this is the oldest evidence of us doing so,” Aubert said.
The interactions between the human-like figures and the pigs (which still inhabit the island) in Layang Karumpuang’s paintings are somewhat mysterious.
“Two of the figures are holding objects of some sort, and at least one figure appears to be extending a hand toward the pig’s face. Another figure is standing in an upside-down position directly above the pig’s head,” Brumm said.
Little is known about the people who created the Sulawesi cave paintings. Aubert said the paintings may be even older than the minimum age determined by the new testing and possibly date back to the first wave of Homo sapiens that spread through the region and eventually migrated out of Africa to Australia about 65,000 years ago.
The oldest cave painting known to date was in the Layang Tedongnge Cave, also in Sulawesi, dating back at least 45,500 years.
The researchers said the Layang Karumpuang paintings are older than cave paintings in Europe, the oldest of which is at El Castillo in Spain, dating back about 40,800 years.
A hand-made stencil painting has been found in Spain’s Maltravieso Cave, which some scientists have dated to about 64,000 years ago and attributed to Neanderthals. Other scientists have disputed the age of the painting and argued that it was created by Homo sapiens.
“This discovery of very old cave art in Indonesia confirms that Europe was not the birthplace of cave art, as was long believed. It also shows that storytelling was a much older part of human history, and especially the history of art, than previously believed,” Brumm said.
“The oldest Sulawesi rock art is not ‘simple,'” Aubert said. “It is quite advanced and reflects the mental capacity of the people of the time.”
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