Jan 14, 2021 Scientists from Griffith University have discovered the world’s oldest known cave painting on a limestone wall on South Sulawesi island in Indonesia. Maxime Auberttime Dated to a remarkable 45,500 years ago, the painting is of a Sulawesi warty pig, a species hunted and depicted often in Sulawesi cave art from the Last Glacial Period. The discovery definitively knocks out Europe and establishes that the Indo-Pacific is the center of the first-known developments in artistic expression and perhaps even story-telling. “The cave is in a valley that’s enclosed by steep limestone cliffs and is only accessible by a narrow cave passage in the dry season, as the valley floor is completely flooded in the wet,” said Prof. Adam Brumm, co-leader of the expedition that consisted of researchers from both Indonesia’s highest center for archaeology (ARKENA), and Griffith’s Research Center for Human Evolution.