Indonesian handprints are the oldest cave art found yet
NEW YORK– Handprints on cave walls in a largely unexplored region of Indonesia could be the oldest rock art studied so far, dating back at least 67,800 years.
The beige-colored prints analyzed by Indonesian and Australian researchers on the island of Sulawesi were made by blowing pigment onto hands placed against the cave walls, leaving an outline. Some fingertips have also been changed to appear more pointed.
This prehistoric art form suggests that the Indonesian island was home to a thriving artistic culture. To determine the age of the paintings, researchers dated the mineral crusts that had formed on the artwork.
Seeing the new study, independent paleoanthropologist Geneviève von Petzinger said she “squealed with joy.”
“It fits everything I was thinking,” she said.
Indonesia is known for being home to some of the world’s earliest cave paintings, and scientists have analyzed countless examples of ancient art around the world, including simple markings on bones and stones that date back hundreds of thousands of years. Hatch marks on a piece of rock in South Africa date to around 73,000 years ago.
The new art of Southeast Sulawesi is the oldest found on cave walls. Stencils also represent a more complex tradition of rock art that may have been a shared cultural practice, said study author Maxime Aubert of Griffith University, who published the study Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Scientists are eager to understand when early humans learned to create art, moving from dots and lines to more meaningful representations of themselves and the world around them. These cave drawings help to establish a timeline of the dawn of human creativity.
It is not yet clear who made these prints. They may belong to an ancient human group called Denisovans that lived in the area and may have interacted with our Homo sapiens ancestors before eventually disappearing. Or perhaps they belong to modern humans venturing far from Africa, who might have wandered through the Middle East and Australia at that time. Fine details on the rock art, including intentionally altered fingertips, indicate a human hand.
Other drawings discovered in the same area of the island, including a human figure, a bird and horse-like animals, were created much more recently, some around 4,000 years ago.
There are probably more artworks on nearby islands that could be even older than the handprints. Future studies could help scientists understand how these artistic traditions spread across the world and how they are woven into the fabric of humanity’s early days.
“For us, this discovery is not the end of the story,” Aubert said in an email. “It’s an invitation to keep looking.”
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