Rock art from at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi
TL;DR
Imagine finding a spray-painted handprint on a cave wall. Over thousands of years, a thin, glassy layer of minerals, like limescale in a kettle, grew on top of it. Scientists used a high-tech laser to analyze that mineral layer. By measuring the natural radioactive decay of elements within it, they figured out the layer is about 71,600 years old. Since the handprint is underneath that layer, it must be at least that old, with the most conservative estimate being 67,800 years. This makes it one of the oldest pieces of art ever found and proves that the early humans who lived on this Indonesian island, who had to cross the ocean to get there, were creating symbolic art.
The Indonesian archipelago is host to some of the earliest known rock art in the world. Previously, secure Pleistocene dates were reported for figurative cave art and stencils of human hands in two areas in Indonesia—the Maros-Pangkep karsts in the southwestern peninsula of the island of Sulawesi and the Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat region of eastern Kalimantan, Borneo. Here we describe a series of early dated rock art motifs from the southeastern portion of Sulawesi. Among this assemblage of Pleistocene (and possibly more recent) motifs, laser-ablation U-series (LA-U-series) dating of calcite overlying a hand stencil from Liang Metanduno on Muna Island yielded a U-series date of 71.6 ± 3.8 thousand years ago (ka), providing a minimum-age constraint of 67.8 ka for the underlying motif. The Muna minimum (67.8 ± 3.8 ka) exceeds the published minimum for rock art in Maros-Pangkep by 16.6 thousand years (kyr) and is 1.1 kyr greater than the published minimum for a hand stencil from Spain attributed to Neanderthals, which until now represented the oldest demonstrated minimum-age constraint for cave art worldwide. Moreover, the presence of this extremely old art in Sulawesi suggests that the initial peopling of Sahul about 65 ka involved maritime journeys between Borneo and Papua, a region that remains poorly explored from an archaeological perspective.
- 1The rock art in Sulawesi is at least 67,800 years old, making it one of the oldest known examples of cave art.
- 2The dating of the rock art suggests that early humans in the region engaged in maritime journeys between Borneo and Papua.
- 3The findings provide evidence of a sophisticated artistic culture in Sulawesi during the Late Pleistocene epoch.
- 4The study uses advanced laser-ablation U-series dating techniques to establish the age of the rock art.
- 5The research supports the theory that the initial peopling of Sahul involved maritime travel through northern Wallacea.
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