Archaeologists believe they have discovered the world’s oldest-known representational artwork: three wild pigs painted deep in a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi at least 45,500 years ago.
The ancient images, revealed this week in the journal Science Advances, were found in Leang Tedongnge cave. Made with red ochre pigment, the painting appears to depict a group of Sulawesi warty pigs, two of which appear to be fighting. Those two images are badly damaged, but the third, possibly watching the drama unfold, remains in near-pristine condition.
“The world’s oldest surviving representational image of an animal,” the paper noted, the painting “may also constitute the most ancient figurative artwork known to archaeology.”
“I was struck dumb,” Adam Brumm of Griffith University, Australia, the article’s lead author, told NewScientist. “It’s one of the most spectacular and well-preserved figurative animal paintings known from the whole region, and it just immediately blew me away.”
Archaeologist Basran Burhan, a Griffith University PhD student, discovered the cave and its prehistoric paintings in December 2017. It’s only accessible during the dry season, via a long trek over mountains through a rough forest path.
Previously, the oldest-known figurative art was actually from a nearby cave, Leang Bulu’Sipong, discovered by the same team. Announced in late 2019, that 43,900-year-old work depicts eight figures with weapons in hand approaching wild pigs and small native buffaloes. In 2014, the archaeologists also made headlines with the discovery of an animal painting at least 35,700 years old, and hand stencils from some 40,000 years ago.
As for the oldest art in the world, “it depends on what definition of ‘art’ you use,” Griffith University archaeologist Maxime Aubert, one of the paper’s co-authors, told National Geographic.
Some archaeologists believe that red markings found in a South African cave in 2018 represent the world’s first known drawings, created an astonishing 73,000 years ago, and 64,000-year-old Neanderthal cave paintings were discovered in Spain in 2018.
Such discoveries in Indonesia throw into question long-held beliefs that art originated in Europe, where sites like Spain’s El Castillo cave and France’s Chauvet cave feature work from 35,000 to 40,000 years ago.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by MAGZOID staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)