42,000 year old cave painting in Indonesia may be world's oldest known figurative artwork

Popular Archaeology
Wed, 13 Jan 2021 19:50 UTC

Scientists have uncovered a pig painting in an Indonesian cave that dates back more than 45,000 years, representing perhaps the world's oldest surviving animal depiction and the most ancient known figurative artwork.

The cave painting may also provide the earliest evidence for anatomically modern humans on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, supporting the view that the first populations to settle the Wallacea islands created artistic depictions of animals and narrative scenes as part of their culture.

Indonesia has been known to harbor some of the world's oldest surviving cave art, including previously discovered paintings on its largest island, Sulawesi.

In 2017 and 2018, Adam Brumm and colleagues discovered two previously unknown depictions of the Sulawesi warty pig - characterized by its facial warts - painted in red or dark purplish mineral pigments in two Sulawesi limestone caves.

A 136-by-54 centimeter pig painted in the Leang Tedongnge cave appeared to be part of a narrative scene with two less complete pigs that appeared to be confronting each other, while four hand stencils superimposed a 187-by-110 centimeter pig in the Leang Balangajia 1 cave, which was accompanied by several other poorly preserved animal paintings.

Uranium-series isotope dating analyses conducted with small cave mineral deposits that overlie the images indicated that the Leang Tedongnge painting is at least 45,500 years old and the Leang Balangajia 1 painting is at least 32,000 years old.

While Brumm et al. are unable to definitively determine that the pigs were painted by modern humans, they conclude that this is most likely the case, since other figurative depictions around the world have been exclusively attributed to modern humans.

Article Source: Science Advances news release. Science Advances is published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

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And check out SOTT radio's: MindMatters: The Meaning of the World's Mythologies

Reader Comments

Rowan Cocoan ·

Cool. RC

· 2021-01-13T21:50:43Z

jfm5959 · 2021-01-14T20:58:49Z

If you compare the colored picture with the islands of Indonesia and the surrounding area, I would say that the pig was drawn on a map of the area with the Indonesian archipelago clearly depicted.

Research the Piri Reis map depicting the continent of Antarctica in 1513, which was a place no one could have know about had there not been much earlier maps drawn by perhaps an ancient civilization. By ancient I mean hundreds of thousands of year ago. More and more archeology and research are pointing to that conclusion.

Rowan Cocoan · 2021-01-14T22:03:49Z

jfm5959 Am aware of the PR, but could you explicate what you see in which picture? Thanks RC

prehistoric · 2021-01-16T00:29:47Z

Rowan Cocoan Have a look here at a map of Indonesia and the areas behind and in front of the pig [Link]
maybe open in a separate window so you can view simultaneously.

Christian Witchburn · 2021-01-17T16:05:53Z

jfm5959 Do you suppose then, that the hand is a compass? It had just occurred to me that it probably was. It would all make sense if it was. Then the thing starts to actually look familiar, frankly. It's a map to Denny's.

Grandpa was badass.

Rowan Cocoan · 2021-01-17T16:36:14Z

Christian Witchburn

PH, I can't get there with the startpage type link you've provided. I've gotten this far: [Link] (Please contrast my link's details with yours. (Right click on the blue "links".)

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42,000 year old cave painting in Indonesia may be world's oldest known figurative artwork

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