An outline of a hand made with red pigment in an Indonesian cave is at least 67,800 years old and may be the oldest known form of rock art, according to a new study published in the journal Nature
The outline of a hand made in red pigment on the wall of an Indonesian cave at least 67,800 years ago may be the oldest cave art in the world, according to a new study.
The faded hand stencil, along with other spectacular cave paintings on the island of Sulawesi, was likely created by early humans who were part of a population that expanded into a lost continent known as Sahul, which today includes Australia, Papua New Guinea and parts of Indonesia.
“They are made with ochre. They put their hand on the wall and then sprayed the pigment. We couldn’t say what technique they used. They could have put the pigment in their mouth and blown. They could have used some kind of instrument,” explains Maxime Aubert, archaeologist and geochemist at Griffith University in Australia. Senior author of the study published in the journal Nature, he described the discovery as “exciting and humbling”.
The faint outline of the hand cast detailed in the new study can be seen among other cave paintings. (Image: Griffith University)
The minimum age of the hand stencil, which would have been modified at some point to create distinctly narrower fingers, is greater than that of dozens of other examples of prehistoric art preserved in the region’s intriguing limestone caves. Another example is a scene with partly human and partly animal figures hunting a warty pig, considered the oldest evidence of narrative in the history of art.
“What we are seeing in Indonesia is probably not a series of isolated surprises, but the gradual revelation of a much deeper and older cultural tradition that has simply gone unnoticed until now,” says Maxime Aubert.
The entrance to Metanduno cave on Muno, an island in southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, where the hand stencil was found. (Image: Adhi Agus Oktaviana/Griffith University)
The new study analyzed 44 sites in southeast Sulawesi and confidently dated 11 rock art motifs, including seven hand stencils. The team found the oldest stencil in the Metanduno cave on the island of Muna. The cave also features much more recent images of horses, deer and pigs, painted perhaps 3,500 to 4,000 years ago, according to the study. These paintings have long been a tourist attraction.
Dating cave art is a complex process, and the team used a technique that analyzes chemical traces in mineral crusts that form above the paintings, sometimes called “cave popcorn,” to establish a minimum age for the art.
Sulawesi rock art is also older than famous European cave art such as Lascaux in France, and than a hand stencil suspected to have been made by Neanderthals in a cave in Spain.
Prehistoric Picassos
The prehistoric people who created hand stencils were most likely early members of our own species, homo sapiens, who lived in Southeast Asia during the Ice Age. At that time, sea levels were much lower and the region had a very different appearance, the study says.
Adhi Agus Oktaviana, one of the authors of the study who first identified the hand shapes in Metanduna Cave, working at the site. (Image: Maxime Aubert/Griffith University)
Maxime Aubert says that after humans made the stencils, they narrowed their fingers, making them look like claws. He considers the hand negatives to be examples of art that reveal complex behaviors, even though they are not figurative or narrative like the captivating warty pig hunting scene.
For example, he claims that hands marked places that were important to artists. “It was not a casual activity. It required planning, shared knowledge and cultural significance.”
The hand stencils were materially different from a 73,000-year-old stone sliver discovered in a South African cave, which featured lines and which some considered the oldest known drawing. Maxime Aubert notes that these lines were abstract and might not have been an intentional image.
Prehistoric humans have been making distinctive shapes with their hands in caves on Sulawesi for tens of thousands of years. Here is an undated example from Leang Jarie, Maros, Sulawesi. The hand stencil detailed in the new study was left on a different cave wall and made at least 67,800 years ago. (Image: Ahdi Agus Oktaviana/Griffith University)
Paul Pettitt, professor of Paleolithic archeology and specialist in prehistoric art at Durham University in the United Kingdom, says the date assigned to the hand stencil corresponds to a minimum age. It could be much older, he says, and one should not automatically assume that the stencil was made by homo sapiens. Other human species, such as the little-understood Denisovans, likely lived in the region, explains Paul Pettitt, who was not involved in the study.
“It is certainly unclear whether the stencils of hands with narrow, pointed fingers have been deliberately modified or are simply the result of finger movement, but calling this complex is an overinterpretation of the hand stencil,” he says.
“Before writing grand narratives about the complexity and success of Homo sapiens, we should consider other, potentially more interesting, explanations for this fascinating phenomenon.”
A dangerous journey
Muna Island, where the hand stencil was found, and the now-missing continental landmasses of Sunda and Sahul. (Image: M. Kottermair and A. Jalandoni/Griffith University)
The presence of extremely ancient rock art on Sulawesi is also helping archaeologists answer hotly debated questions about how and when the first humans arrived in a lost land known as Sahul. This landmass already connected Australia to the island of New Guinea, today divided between Papua New Guinea and Indonesian Papua.
Some researchers believe that humans arrived in Sahul around 50,000 years ago, while others argue that the arrival occurred at least 65,000 years ago. The route they followed is also debated. The age of Sulawesi rock art suggests that the ancestors of the first Australians could already be in Sahul according to the earliest chronology and that these early humans took a more northerly route via Sulawesi, which at the time remained an island.
Such a journey would have been dangerous, involving the first planned long-distance sea crossings undertaken by our species, according to the study. The route likely involved crossing Borneo (then part of a land mass known as Sunda) to Sulawesi and other islands that form a region scientists call Wallacea, before reaching Sahul.
Martin Richards, professor of archaeogenetics research at the University of Huddersfield in the UK, who uses ancient DNA and genetic evidence from current populations to understand how and when humans first arrived in Australia, says the new study is “extremely interesting”.
“It provides the first clear evidence (by implication, from the sophistication of rock art) of the presence of modern Homo sapiens in Wallacea around 70,000 years ago,” says Martin Richards, who was also not involved in the study.
“An arrival in Sahul around 60,000 years ago, with a presence on Sulawesi in the previous 10,000 years, makes perfect sense and supports the ‘northern route’ model for the first settlement of Sahul,” he says.
Other experts suggest that people may have used a more southerly route, moving through Java, Bali and the Lesser Sunda Islands before crossing into northwestern Australia.
Until now, there has been little archaeological evidence along either route that clearly supports one over the other, says Maxime Aubert.
“During the Ice Age, sea levels were lower, but people still had to travel by boat between islands, and Sulawesi was probably a key stopping point,” he says.
“The quantity and age of the rock art found here suggests that this was not a marginal site but a cultural center where early humans lived, traveled and expressed ideas through art for tens of thousands of years.”
