Indonesia: World’s oldest cave painting found – painted at least 51,000 years ago

A fat red pig surrounded by three human figures: the picture was painted more than 51,000 years ago. On a cave wall in Indonesia, it is believed to be the oldest work of art in the world.

“This drawing, despite its simplicity, clearly tells a story, and is the oldest evidence of narrative,” archaeologist Adam Broom explained at a press conference, because it is much older than the Lascaux and Chauvet cave paintings in France, the authors of the study published today in the scientific journal Nature.

The previous record was set by a hunting scene found by the same team of researchers in 2019, also in an Indonesian cave. They estimated at the time (wrongly) that it was about 44,000 years old.

“With the latest discovery in the nearby Maros-Panjip Cave in Kilifi, we are for the first time passing the 50,000-year mark,” said archaeologist Maxime Aubert of Australia’s Griffith University. The fact that early members of the human species were able to tell such a “complex” story through art could mean we need to rethink how we understand the intellectual development of Homo sapiens, he added.

Until now, researchers have turned to a new method that uses lasers and software to recreate a “map” of the rock. This technique is more accurate, easier, faster and cheaper, and requires much smaller rock samples than the previous method, Aubert explained. It doesn’t date the painting directly, but rather the different layers of mineral elements that have accumulated over time. To test the new technique, the researchers applied it to the previous record-holder petroglyphs: They found that they were at least 48,000 years old, 4,000 years older than they thought in 2019.

They then tested the laser method on an undated image found in Kilifi in 2017. The bottom line: It was at least 51,200 years old.

The red panel, in poor condition, depicts three faces around a wild boar. It is difficult for scientists to understand the meaning of these images, which seem to describe an action, unlike the mysterious “well scene” at Lascaux (21,000 years ago), in which a man with a bird’s head is knocked down by a bison.

Maxime Aubert speculates that the painting is likely the work of early humans who crossed Southeast Asia and then reached Australia, around 65,000 years ago. “It may be a matter of time before we find older specimens,” he commented.

The oldest hand-drawn designs known today are simple lines and patterns found in South Africa and estimated to be 100,000 years old. Maxime Aubert notes that there is a “huge gap” between this early “work of art” and cave paintings in Indonesia.

Before the discoveries in Indonesia, archaeologists believed that the first “narrative” images appeared in Western Europe, such as a 40,000-year-old statue of a man with a lion’s head found in Germany.

Source: RES-MPE