A cave painting in Indonesia has been identified as the oldest known artwork in the world, dating back at least 51,200 years. This discovery, made by an international team of researchers, also represents the earliest known evidence of storytelling in art. The painting, found in the Leang Karampuang cave on the island of Sulawesi, depicts a narrative scene that has captivated scientists.
While the exact subject of the painting remains unclear, it likely shows three small human-bird hybrids surrounding a massive wild pig, which they were probably hunting. Renaud Joannes-Boyau, a co-author of the study published in the journal Nature, emphasized the significance of this storytelling aspect. “That is something new, something very important, something that happened much older than we thought,” said Joannes-Boyau, who is also a professor at Southern Cross University in Lismore, Australia.
Samples of the painting were collected in 2017, but it was only recently that a team of Indonesian and Australian researchers used a new dating technique to determine its age. This technique revealed that the painting is thousands of years older than the previous record holder, which is also located on Sulawesi, about six miles away. “Representation of human figures is already extremely rare,” Joannes-Boyau noted. “But storytelling of 51,200 years old is even more incredible.”
Sulawesi is home to some of the world’s oldest cave paintings, thanks to its unique preservation capabilities. The previous record holder, a painting of a wild pig depicting a narrative scene, was created at least 45,500 years ago and was found in a cave called Leang Tedongnge. The island’s weather and topography contribute to the preservation of these ancient artworks.
As water flows across the walls of caves, it deposits a layer of a mineral called calcite. These calcite layers not only protect the paintings but can also be used to determine their age. However, the layers are usually uneven, making it difficult to use previous dating techniques that involve extracting a sample and averaging the age of all layers. “You get bumps. You have places where you have more calcites and places where you have less calcites,” Joannes-Boyau explained. “That makes it very complicated to date.”
This time, the team used a uranium-based dating technique, which involves shining a laser beam one-third the size of a human hair on a much smaller sample of the calcite. “We can calculate ages on the layer that is really against the paint,” Joannes-Boyau said. This new method is not only more efficient but also much more accurate and causes less damage to the original artifact.
Using this technique, scientists reassessed the age of another painting from Sulawesi, revising its age to be at least 48,000 years old, 4,000 years older than originally thought. “It opens a lot of possibilities,” Joannes-Boyau said. It also raises new questions about what human ancestors were capable of thousands of years ago. While the painting’s true purpose and meaning remain a mystery, clues might be found from its location in a cave that was not easily accessible. “They were not common living spaces. This is actually a place where you have to go for a purpose and is probably linked to some sort of a ceremony,” he said.
The discovery was a “very humbling moment” for the researchers. “It’s the story of humanity as a group,” Joannes-Boyau added. “It’s not about our differences, it’s about all of us being on that scene.”
The world’s oldest figurative paintings, showing a pig and three humans, were discovered on the ceiling of a limestone cave on Sulawesi by a team of Australian and Indonesian scientists. The paintings unearthed in the Leang Karampuang cave are at least 51,200 years old, according to a research paper published in the journal Nature. “This narrative composition, which depicts human-like figures interacting with a pig, is now the earliest known surviving example of representational art and visual storytelling in the world,” the scientists said.
Adam Brumm, an archaeologist from Griffith University in Australia who collaborated on the discovery, told Reuters, “This discovery of very old cave art in Indonesia drives home the point that Europe was not the birthplace of cave art, as had long been assumed.” Archaeologists uncovered a wealth of Paleolithic drawings and engravings in the Chauvet cave in southern France in 1994, for instance.
The team at the Leang Karampuang site used a new technique to determine the minimum age of the paintings, employing a laser to date a type of crystal called calcium carbonate that had formed naturally on top of the figures depicted. Maxime Aubert, a specialist in archaeological science at Griffith University in Australia, said, “The method is a significant improvement over other methods and should revolutionize rock art dating worldwide.”
The scientists say that “to demonstrate the efficiency and reliability of this [laser] technique, we re-dated what was previously the oldest known surviving pictorial narrative, a rock art scene at [nearby cave] Leang Bulu’ Sipong,” which was considered to be the oldest cave art in the world. At Leang Bulu’ Sipong, there are “several figurative paintings of human-like figures interacting with Sulawesi warty pigs and dwarf bovids.” Using the new technique, the rock art scene at Leang Bulu’ Sipong was found to be at least 4,040 years older, dating from 48,000 years ago.
In 2014, scientists found art depicting an unknown animal in the cave of Lubang Jeriji Saléh on the Indonesian Island of Borneo; this depiction was thought to be more than 40,000 years old. The painting in the limestone cave of Leang Karampuang in the Maros-Pangkep region of South Sulawesi shows representational art – an abstract representation of the world around the person or people that painted it. It therefore represents an evolution in the thought processes in our species that gave rise to art and science.
Dr. Henry Gee, a senior editor at the journal Nature, where the details were published, said, “Something seems to have happened around 50,000 years ago, shortly after which all other species of human such as Neanderthals and the so-called Hobbit died out. It is very romantic to think that at some point in that time something happened in the human brain, but I think it is more likely that there are even earlier examples of representational art.”
Prof. Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London believes that there may be examples of ancient representational art in Africa, where modern humans first evolved, but we have not found any yet. “This find reinforces the idea that representational art was first produced in Africa, before 50,000 years ago, and the concept spread as our species spread. If that is true, much new supporting evidence from other areas including Africa has yet to emerge. Obviously, this oldest date is work on one panel at one site – hopefully more dating will be done at more sites to confirm this apparently crucial finding.”
The new dating was made possible using a new method which involves cutting tiny amounts of the art using a laser. This enables researchers to study different parts of the artwork in greater detail and come up with a more accurate dating. As the new method becomes more widely used, several sites with cave art across the world may be re-dated, possibly pushing back further the emergence of representational art.
Until 10 years ago, the only evidence of ancient cave art was found in places such as Spain and Southern France. It led some to believe that the creative explosion that led to the art and science we know today began in Europe. But the discovery of colored outlines of human hands in South Sulawesi in 2014 shattered that view. Then in November 2018, in the cave of Lubang Jeriji Saléh on the Indonesian Island of Borneo, scientists found the then oldest representational artwork, thought to be more than 40,000 years old, of an unknown animal.
Prof. Adam Brumm from Griffith University said that the latest Indonesian cave art discoveries cast new light on the important role of storytelling in the history of art. “It is noteworthy that the oldest cave art we have found in Sulawesi thus far consists of recognizable scenes: that is, paintings that depict humans and animals interacting in such a way that we can infer the artist intended to communicate a narrative of some kind – a story,” he said.
Among the hundreds of caves hidden in the limestone karsts of Indonesia’s Sulawesi island, a work of art faded into a rock wall could be of global importance. A depiction of three humanoid figures and a pig, the painting is the oldest known scene created by humans, dated to at least 51,200 years ago, scientists say. It was evidence that humans were capable of storytelling in the distant past, said Adam Brumm, a professor of archaeology at Griffith University’s Australian Research Center for Human Evolution and an author of the study, which was published in Nature on Thursday.
“Storytelling is a hugely important part of human evolution, and possibly even it helps to explain our success as a species,” he said in a briefing about the research. “But finding evidence for it in art, especially in very early cave art, is exceptionally rare.” “We don’t know exactly what’s going on in this scene,” he added of the cave painting. “But it’s clearly communicating some sort of story that involves the interaction between these three humanlike figures and the pig.”
The Sulawesi residents of 50,000 B.C. or so were “besotted” with painting pigs, depicting them over and over again in cave art there, Brumm said. Archaeological evidence suggests they hunted the species, called the Celebes warty pig. The cave’s elevated position, which would not have been convenient for everyday life, could suggest they went there specifically to paint or to paint as part of some other special practice, he added.
“I think what we have now, from the early Sulawesi cave art findings, is the world’s earliest known surviving evidence for imaginative storytelling in the use of scenes in art,” he said. The site is somewhat of a hot spot for significant cave painting discoveries. Previous finds on Sulawesi in recent years were dated to between 40,000 and 44,000 years old, which was then the oldest scene of cave art found. There are at least 300 cave and shelter art sites preserved in the area, many of which have not been closely studied.
The research team, co-led by the Indonesian National Research and Innovation Agency and Australia’s Griffith University and Southern Cross University, used a new method of dating by analyzing accumulated layers of calcium carbonate on top of the painting. They also revised the date for the 44,000-year-old work to closer to 48,000.
The oldest known cave paintings in the world were made by Neanderthals, scientists believe. About 65,000 years ago, members of our doomed cousin species left handprints, lines, and shapes in three caves in modern-day Spain — at least 20 millennia before modern humans are believed to have arrived on the continent. The famous cave art at Lascaux, France, is dated to a maximum age of about 21,000 years.
Source: NBC News, Reuters, BBC News
