Climate change is not only affecting cities and daily life but also slowly destroying ancient art dating back to 44,000 years ago. Cave paintings found in a limestone cave are slowly being erased by salt crystallization caused by the changing climate.
A new report suggests that the cave art in Sulawesi is deteriorating at an alarming rate.
May 19, 2021
Makassar’s culture heritage department, Balai Pelestarian Cagar Budaya, undertaking rock art monitoring in Maros-Pangkep. Photo by Rustan Lebe, courtesy of Griffith University.
For tens of thousands of years, prehistoric paintings have survived in the caves of Sulawesi, an Indonesian island, offering an invaluable record of early humanity’s creative impulses.
Now, those Pleistocene-era works, created between 20,000 and 45,500 years ago, are in danger of being lost forever due to the ravages of climate change.
Sulawesi’s cave art is weathering at an alarmingly rapid rate, and the planet’s rapidly warming climate is to blame, reports a new study in the journal