In a hidden valley on an island in Indonesia, there is a cave decorated with what may be the oldest figurative art ever seen by modern eyes.
The vivid depiction of a wild pig, outlined and filled with pigment in shades of blackberry, dates back at least 45,500 years, according to a study published on Wednesday in Science Advances. He was discovered at the bottom of a cave called Leang Tedongnge in December 2017, during an archaeological research led by Basran Burhan, a graduate student at Griffith University and co-author of the new research. The animal in the painting resembles the warty pig, a species that still lives on the island of Sulawesi, where the cave is located.
Sulawesi was already considered by some experts as the site of the oldest representational rock art known in the world. A captivating scene in another part of the island, which displays human-animal hybrids, was found to be at least 43,900 years old, reported by the same team in a 2019 study.
These examples of cave art, along with another pig figure seen in a cave further south by Adhi Agus Oktavhiana, a graduate student at Griffith University and co-author of the study, give an idea of the rich cultures that live on the Indonesian islands. The findings also open a debate about whether the artists could be Homo sapiens or members of another extinct human species.
The Leang Tedongnge site is only about 40 miles from Makassar, a bustling city with about 1.5 million inhabitants. But the cave has remained largely untouched because it is very difficult to reach.
“Getting there requires a difficult hike along a rugged forest path that winds through mountainous terrain and ends in a narrow cave passage, which is the only entrance to the valley,” said Adam Brumm, also an archaeologist at Griffith University and co-author of the study. “The valley can only be accessed during the dry season; during the rainy season, the valley floor is completely flooded and residents have to travel in canoes. “
Dr. Brumm gave credit to local scientists and others for making the discovery at the cave site possible.
After discovering the pig’s painting, the team used uranium dating series to determine its minimum age, reaching 45,500 years. But it is possible that the painting itself is thousands of years older because the technique only assesses the age of a mineral deposit, the speleothem, which formed on the walls of the cave.
The question of who made the paintings is still shrouded in mystery.
Remains of 45,500-year-old human skeletons have never been found in Sulawesi, so it is unclear whether the artists were anatomically modern humans. The islands that are now called Indonesia were inhabited by different hominids – the largest family to which humans belong – for long periods of time. Some of these hominid remains are “more than a million years old,” said Rasmi Shoocongdej, an archaeologist at Silpakorn University in Thailand, who was not involved in the study.
Dr. Brumm and his colleagues assume that the painters were modern humans, “given the sophistication of this ancient work of representational art”. In addition, ancient paintings share characteristics with prehistoric art made by humans in other parts of the world, including the presence of handprints and the use of the “twisted perspective”, in which animals are painted both in profile and from front.
Dr. Brumm says he believes it is only a matter of time before human remains of this age are found in archaeological excavations in the region.
João Zilhão, an archaeologist at the University of Barcelona who was not involved in the study, disagrees with the team’s assumption that modern humans created the paintings. As a co-author of a 2018 study suggesting that Neanderthals left non-figurative art on Spanish cave walls, he believes that another extinct human species may have created the images.
“An anatomically modern human being is an anatomical definition,” he said. “It has nothing to do with cognition, intelligence or behavior.”
Dr. Zilhão added: “There is no evidence about the anatomy of the people who did these things.”
While it is easy to focus on the claim that these are the oldest prehistoric images ever found in people, Margaret Conkey, an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said that it overshadows the “much broader implications” of the discovery.
What stood out in the study of his perspective was his “important contribution to understanding how humans can be in connection with each other” in Sulawesi’s prehistory and “how they are creating social worlds through material and visuals “.
Although the new study uses the term “older”, Dr. Brumm and his colleagues hope to find images in Sulawesi at even older ages.
“We believe there is much older rock art and other evidence of human habitation on Sulawesi and other islands within the eastern part of Indonesia known as the Wallacean archipelago, the gateway to the continent of Australia,” said Dr. Brumm.
Unfortunately, time is of the essence: Indonesian cave art is rapidly deteriorating, raising the sad prospect that many of the oldest paintings on Earth may disappear before being rediscovered.
“We have documented this phenomenon in almost all rock art sites in the region, and monitoring by our colleagues at the local cultural heritage agency suggests that the exfoliation of art is taking place at an alarming rate,” said Dr. Brumm. “It is very worrying and, given the current situation, the end result is likely to be the eventual destruction of this Indonesian ice age art, perhaps even during our lifetime.”