Immortalized 51,200 years ago World's oldest cave painting found in Indonesia

When did people start using art to depict scenes from their daily lives? According to a new dating method, a cave painting on Sulawesi is 51,200 years old - and raises questions.

Archaeologists have dated a rock painting in a cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi to at least 51,200 years old. According to a study, it is the world's oldest known figurative painting. According to the researchers, it depicts three human-like figures interacting with a wild boar. The painting is located in the Maros Pangkep karst region, which is a Unesco World Heritage Site.

"The results suggest that both the depiction of human-like figures and animals and the use of composed scenes in art have an older origin in human history than previously assumed," it said in a statement. Another rock painting with a hunting scene has also been newly dated and, according to the results, is at least 48,000 years old - 4,000 years older than previously thought. The study was published in the journal "Nature".

New dating method with laser

Prehistoric rock art provides important information about early human cultures - but it is not easy to determine the age of these depictions accurately and reliably. A team led by archaeologists Adhi Agus Oktaviana and Maxime Aubert from Griffith University in Australia has now succeeded in doing this using an alternative form of uranium-thorium dating, a special form of radiometric dating. The scientists worked with a special laser technique.

Aubert was part of the research team that discovered the oldest cave painting to date in 2019: a hunting scene found in a cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi not far from the now dated find and estimated by the scientists to be almost 44,000 years old.

A mass spectrometer is coupled to a laser. Calcium carbonate samples that have formed on the painting over the years can be removed using this method and analyzed down to the smallest detail - enabling a very precise age calculation.

Tens of thousands of years earlier than in Europe

Until now, it has been widely assumed that figurative art is of much more recent origin. The study calls this into question: the results imply that there was already a rich culture of visual storytelling on Sulawesi at an early stage in the history of Homo sapiens, especially with regard to the relationship between humans and animals, the researchers write. In Europe, such representations would only have developed tens of thousands of years later.

Sulawesi lies to the east of Borneo and is popular with tourists from all over the world because of its volcanoes, coral reefs and diving spots. The karst region of Maros Pangkep is located in the Bantimurung-Bulusaraung National Park about 50 kilometers north of the capital Makassar. The spectacular rock paintings in the caves were discovered in the 1950s.

dpa