In caves on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, ancient peoples marked the walls with red and mulberry hand stencils, and painted images of large native mammals or imaginary human-animal creatures.
These are the oldest cave art sites yet known or at least the oldest attributed to our species. One painting of a Sulawesi warty pig was recently dated as at least 45,500 years old.
Since the 1950s, archaeologists have observed these paintings appear to be blistering and peeling off the cave walls. Yet, little had been done to understand why.
So our research, published today, explored the mechanisms of decay affecting ancient rock art panels at 11 sites in Sulawesi’s Maros-Pangkep region. We found the deterioration may have gotten worse in recent decades, a trend likely to continue with accelerating climate change.
Vandals have etched a racist phrase, “white power”, as well as other graffiti, over millennia-old Native American petroglyphs in Utah.
The Bureau of Land Management Utah has announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible.
Rock art sites on federal lands are nationally protected areas and it is strongly prohibited to touch the art as even oil from fingertips can irreparably damage the fragile rock surface.
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The four-panel collection of petroglyphs known as the “Birthing Rock” in Moab, Utah was etched into the red sandstone boulder’s four sides by Indigenous inhabitants sometime between 700 and 2,500 years ago. The depictions cover the periods and cultures from the Anasazi (1 to 1275 BCE), Fremont (450 to 1250 BCE), and the Ute (1200 to 1880 BCE).
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Sputnik International
Cave Painting of Pigs Might Be the Oldest Known Artwork of Animals
Image: Maxime Aubert
A pig painting inside an Indonesian cave has been dated to 43,900 years old, making it among the oldest if not
the oldest known figurative art piece in the archaeological record.
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The painting was found at the Leang Tedongnge cave site on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island. The artwork appears to depict a confrontation or some sort of social interaction, between three Sulawesi warty pigs (
Sus celebensis). These short-legged pigs, with their characteristic warty faces, are still around today, and during the Pleistocene they represented an important prey animal for the early humans who lived in this part of the world. That early humans living on the island would depict these creatures on their cave walls is an indication of their cultural, social, and existential importance.
AA Oktaviana
Stunning cave paintings discovered in Indonesia include what might be the oldest known depictions of animals on the planet, dating back at least 45,000 years.
The paintings of three pigs, alongside several hand stencils, were discovered in the limestone cave of Leang Tedongnge on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Even local people were unaware of the cave sites’ existence until their discovery in 2017 by Adam Brumm at Griffith University, Australia, and his team.
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“I was struck dumb,” says Brumm. “It’s one of the most spectacular and well-preserved figurative animal paintings known from the whole region and it just immediately blew me away.”