Scientists from Australia and Indonesia have found the oldest example of figurative cave art on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
The painting, which features a boar and three human-like figures, is at least 51,200 years old, more than 5,000 years older than the oldest known cave paintings.
From this discovery, it is known that the time when the ability of creative thinking appeared in modern humans is much earlier than currently believed.
Griffith University Professor Maxim Obeyer in Australia told the BBC that the discovery would change the way we think about human evolution.
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“This painting tells a complex story. This is the earliest evidence we have of a tradition called Katha. It shows that people of that time also had the ability to think abstractly,” he says.
In the painting, a boar is seen standing with its mouth half open, and at least three human-like figures are visible.
what picture
The largest human figure has both arms outstretched and appears to be holding a rod.
The second figure is in front of the boar, where his head is in front of the boar’s mouth.
He is also seen holding a stick, one end of which appears to be touching the boar’s neck.
The final human-like figure is reversed, with legs spread outwards and turned toward the sky. One of his hands seems to be moving forward and about to touch the boar’s head.
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The team of scientists was led by Agus Octavian, a rock art expert from Jakarta-based ‘National Research and Innovation Agency’ (BRIN).
He says that storytelling has been a very important part of Indonesia’s human civilization since the beginning.
“People have been telling stories since more than 51,200 years ago. But words do not make fossils. We can only approach art through indirect means such as depictions of scenes. And now Sulwesi art is the oldest such evidence known to archeology so far,” he says.
The oldest known evidence of rock paintings was found in Blombos Cave in South Africa. It is believed to be 75 thousand to 100,000 years old. It had geometric patterns.
A new painting found in a limestone cave at Liang Karampuang in the Maros-Pangkep region of South Sulawesi presents symbolic art.
It depicts the abstraction of the person making the picture or the world around the person.
So it shows the evolution in the process of thinking, which gave birth to arts and sciences in the human species.
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What does it indicate?
According to Dr. Henry Gee, senior editor of the ‘Nature’ journal, which has published a detailed description of this discovery, the main question of the discovery is what started the development of such a hypothesis in the human brain.
“Something must have happened shortly after the extinction of Neanderthals and other human species called hobbits, about 50,000 years ago,” he says.
“It’s also exciting to think that something happened in the human mind at some point during that time. But I think there are symbolic arts before that.”
Chris Stringer, a professor at the National History Museum in London, believes there are other examples of ancient symbolic art in Africa, where modern humans first evolved. But we haven’t met it yet.
“This finding reinforces the idea that symbolic art was created in Africa as early as five thousand years ago and that this idea spread as the human species spread.”
“If this is true, more evidence to support it from other places like Africa remains to be seen. This oldest artefact was found on one side of a stone. Hopefully, more ‘dating’ studies at more sites will confirm how old the painting is.”
Illusion and reality
This new ‘dating’ was made possible by a new method of cutting small pieces of art using a laser. This helps researchers to study different parts of the art in detail and to find more accurate time.
As the new method becomes more widely used, cave paintings in many parts of the world will be re-examined, which may push the origin of symbolic art further back.
Until ten years ago, evidence of ancient cave paintings was found only in Spain and southern France. This led some to believe that the creative beginnings towards art and science began in what we today call Europe.
But a colorful drawing of a human hand discovered in South Sulawesi in 2014 shattered this belief.
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Then in November 2018, scientists found the oldest symbolic painting of that time in the Lubang Jeriji Saleh Cave on Borneo Island, Indonesia.
It has a picture of an unknown animal. This painting is believed to be more than 40,000 years old.
Griffith University professor Adam Broom says recent discoveries of Indonesian cave paintings highlight the important role of narrative style in the history of art.
“It is remarkable that the oldest cave we have found at Sulawesi has recognizable objects inside. In the painting, humans and animals are interacting in such a way that we can assume that the artist’s intention is to tell some kind of narrative commentary,” he says.
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