The Oldest Known Rock Art Is Over 67,000 Years Old, Offering Clues Into Our Ancient Ancestors’ Migrations
The outline is pale and blurred. It’s a human hand, although it also looks a bit like a claw.
Found in a cave on a satellite island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, this stencil represents a memory, a memory of a population that may have embarked on the first human migration. in Australia. According to a new study in Natureit is now the oldest reliably dated recorded rock art, predating Previous discoveries of cave paintings in the area from around 16,600 years ago.
“It is now clear from our new phase of research that Sulawesi was home to one of the richest and oldest artistic cultures in the world,” said study author Maxime Aubert, of the Griffith Center for Social and Cultural Research at Griffith University in Australia, according to a press release, “a culture whose origins date back to the island’s earliest history of human occupation at least 67,800 years ago.”
Learn more: Modern humans may have lived alongside an extinct human species in ancient Indonesia
Rock art records
The Indonesian island of Sulawesi is an important site in human history. Of course, it has served as an important space for art and artistic innovation, preserving some of the oldest rock expressions ever identified, including painting of human and animal figures – a possible hunting scene – which the study authors analyzed in an earlier study in 2007. Nature from 2024.
Yet the archipelago may also have supported the early movements of our ancient ancestors, acting as a potential springboard for Homo sapiens as they migrated from Asia to Sahul, the paleocontinent that previously linked Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania.
The 67,800-year-old stencil was identified in Liang Metanduno Cave in Indonesia, shown in an aerial view above.
(Image credit: provided by Ratno Sardi)
Hoping to learn more about the art and migrations of H. sapiensThe study authors’ recent research has focused on Sulawesi and its surrounding islands, identifying a series of ancient rock art paintings. Several were stencils – pigment outlines in the shape of human hands – including the oldest, located in Liang Metanduno Cave on Muna Island, which had been modified to resemble a claw.
Leveraging a handful of techniques, including uranium series dating and mineral deposit analysis, the team determined that the claw-shaped stencil was made about 67,800 years ago, before any other recorded rock art in the region, and attributed it to a H. sapiens artist who was probably linked to the ancestors of the Australian Aborigines.
“It is very likely that the people who made these paintings in Sulawesi were part of a larger population that would later spread across the region and eventually reach Australia,” said study author Adhi Agus Oktaviana of Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency, according to the release. “This discovery strongly supports the idea that the ancestors of the first Australians were at Sahul 65,000 years ago.”
Learn more: Hominids settled in the neighborhood of human Hobbits around 1.04 million years ago
Art in motion
Previously published research suggested that H. sapiens arrived in Sahul on one of two timelines: the “long timeline”, approximately 65,000 years ago, and the “short timeline”, approximately 50,000 years ago. This research also suggests that modern humans landed on the paleocontinent via one of two island-hopping routes: the northern route and the southern route, the former through Sulawesi and the latter through Timor, arriving at the New Guinean and Australian parts of Sahul, respectively.
According to the study authors, Liang Metanduno also contains more recent paintings, suggesting a period of significant occupation, lasting around 35,000 years or more.
(Image credit: provided by Ratno Sardi)
“With the dating of this extremely ancient rock art in Sulawesi, we now have the oldest direct evidence of the presence of modern humans along this northern migration corridor to Sahul,” said study author Renaud Joannes-Boyau of the Geoarchaeology and Archaeometry Research Group at Southern Cross University in Australia, according to the release.
Looking to the future, the team hopes to continue its search for traces of human art and migration, focusing on sites along the northern route to Sahul.
“These discoveries highlight the archaeological importance of the many other Indonesian islands located between Sulawesi and New Guinea,” Aubert added in the statement, hinting at new targets requiring further investigation.
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