51,200 years ago, a historical event was written on the ceiling of a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. A wild pig was painted with crude red pigment, standing peacefully next to three human figures.
The newly discovered artwork is now being heralded as the oldest known cave painting, surpassing the previous record holder by some 10,000 years, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
“This method represents a significant improvement over other methods and should revolutionize the dating of rock art worldwide,” said Maxime Aubert, an archaeologist at Griffith University in Australia and one of the study’s lead authors. Reuters.
According to the study, the scene from Leang Karampuang Cave in Maros-Pangkep, South Sulawesi province, shows a pig measuring 91 cm by 38 cm. The pig is depicted standing by the group of people. Several smaller images of pigs were also found in the cave and were similarly dated using a laser to assess a crystal called calcium carbonate that grows organically on the pigment. Unless discovered in the future, the paintings represent the earliest example of storytelling in visual art.
“The three humanoid figures and the pig figure were clearly not depicted in isolation in separate parts of the rock art panel,” Adam Brumm, an archaeologist at Griffith University and co-leader of the study, said in a statement. The relationship between the humanoids and the pig, however, remains unknown.
“Two of these figures are holding objects, and at least one figure appears to be reaching toward the pig’s face. Another figure is positioned directly above the pig’s head, upside down,” Brumm said.
The mystery only deepens because little is known about the people who painted the Sulawesi cave, although the study’s leaders speculate that carbon dating could reveal them as the first Homo sapiens to pass through the region during their migration from Africa to Australia about 65,000 years ago.
The Leang Karampuang painting, the study adds, predates the famous cave paintings of Europe, the oldest of which was discovered in El Castillo in Spain and created around 40,800 years ago.
“This discovery of very ancient rock art in Indonesia shows that Europe is not the birthplace of rock art, as has long been assumed. It also suggests that storytelling is a much older part of human history, and art history in particular, than previously thought,” Brumm said.
