This image released by Griffith University on July 3, 2024 shows a 51,000-year-old artwork that was first spotted in a cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi in 2017. Agence France-Presse
PARIS — It may not look like much — just a chipped image of three people around a big red pig.
But the modest cave painting discovered in Indonesia is the oldest known narrative work ever made by human hands, dating back more than 51,000 years, according to a new study published Wednesday.
“This is the oldest evidence of storytelling,” Maxime Aubert, an archaeologist at Australia’s Griffith University, told AFP.
READ: Study finds earliest cave art was by Neanderthals, not humans
Aubert was part of the team that identified the previous record holder in 2019, a hunting scene found in a nearby Indonesian cave then estimated to be nearly 44,000 years old.
The latest discovery, dated using a new laser technique, marks “the first time we’ve crossed the 50,000-year barrier,” said Aubert, co-author of a new study in Nature describing the find.
The fact that early humans were able to tell such a “sophisticated” story through art could rewrite our understanding of human cognitive evolution, he added.
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“Our discovery suggests that storytelling is a much older part of human history…than previously thought,” archaeologist Adam Brumm, a co-author of the study, said at a news conference.
New dating laser
For this discovery, the researchers used a new method that uses lasers and computer software to create a “map” of rock samples.
This laser ablation technique is more precise, easier, faster, cheaper and requires much smaller rock samples than the previous uranium series method, Aubert said.
The team first tested the new technique on the former record holder.
She determined that the hunting scene was actually at least 48,000 years old, 4,000 years older than the uranium series method determined in 2019.
The team then tested the laser method on a previously undated painting first spotted in a cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi in 2017.
It was found to be at least 51,200 years old, breaking the previous record.
The painting, in poor condition, shows three people around a wild pig.
“We don’t know exactly what they’re doing,” Aubert admitted.
He speculated that the paintings were likely made by the first group of humans to travel through Southeast Asia before arriving in Australia about 65,000 years ago.
“It’s probably only a matter of time before we find older samples,” Aubert added.
The mystery of the artistic gap
Humans first evolved in Africa over 300,000 years ago.
The earliest known images to have been made by man are simple lines and patterns made in ochre, discovered in South Africa and dating back 100,000 years.
But there is a “huge gap” in human art up to Indonesian cave paintings 50,000 years later, Aubert said.
“The question is: why isn’t this the case everywhere?”
One theory is that artwork from elsewhere has not survived all these millennia. Another is that ancient art may still be there, waiting to be discovered.
Until now, it was thought that the first artistic narratives originated in Europe. A statue of the “lion man” discovered in Germany has been dated to around 40,000 years ago.
The dating given for the Indonesian rock art is “quite provocative” because it is much older than what has been found elsewhere, including in Europe, said Chris Stringer, an anthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London.
Stringer, who was not involved in the research, said the team’s findings appeared robust but needed to be confirmed by further dating.
“In my opinion, this discovery reinforces the idea that figurative art was first produced in Africa, 50,000 years ago, and that the concept spread as our species spread,” he told AFP.
“If this is true, much further evidence from other regions, particularly Africa, has yet to emerge…”
