The faint outline of a handprint (above the dark figure of a bird and to the left side of the horse) in the Liang Metanduno cave in Sulawesi is believed to be the oldest known rock art in the world.
Handprints in a cave in a largely unexplored area of Indonesia may be the oldest rock art studied to date. It predates the arrival of modern humans in Europe and more than 1,000 years older than the oldest evidence of rock art known to date.
In a study in Nature this Wednesday, scientists claim to have identified the oldest rock art in the world.
These are handprints created at least 67,800 years in Indonesia.
The brown-colored marks analyzed by Indonesian and Australian scientists in a limestone cave in southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, were made by blowing pigment onto hands pressed against the cave walls, leaving an outline.
As archaeologists detailed, some of the fingertips were altered to appear more pointed.
This prehistoric art form suggests that the Indonesian island of Sulawesi was home to a flourishing artistic culture.
To determine the age of the paintings, researchers dated mineral crusts that had formed on the paintings. It is, however, not yet clear whose hands made the prints.
According to researchers, may be from an ancient group of Denisovanswhich lived in the region and may have interacted with ‘Homo sapiens’ before eventually becoming extinct.
Or they could belong to modern humans who ventured out of Africa, possibly migrating through the Middle East and Australia at that time.
Meticulous details in rock art, including intentionally modified fingertips, point to a human handaccording to scientists.
Other drawings discovered in the same area of the island, including a human figure, a bird and horse-like animalswere considered much more recent, some of them around 4,000 years.
