via Nature Human Behaviour, 16 March 2020: A new an exciting paper from Langley et al. in Nature Human Behaviour demonstrates that ancient people living Indonesia not only made wall paintings, but portable art as well. Two small stone ‘plaquettes’ incised with figurative imagery are found from Leang Bulu Bettue in Sulawesi, dating to 26–14 ka years ago.
The ability to produce recognizable depictions of objects from the natural world—known as figurative art—is unique to Homo sapiens and may be one of the cognitive traits that separates our species from extinct hominin relatives. Surviving examples of Pleistocene figurative art are generally confined to rock art or portable three-dimensional works (such as figurines) and images engraved into the surfaces of small mobile objects. These portable communicative technologies first appear in Europe some 40 thousand years ago (ka) with the arrival of H. sapiens. Conversely, despite H. sapiens having moved into Southeast Asia–Australasia by at least 65 ka, very little evidence for Pleistocene-aged portable art has been identified, leading to uncertainties regarding the cultural behaviour of the earliest H. sapiens in this region. Here, we report the discovery of two small stone ‘plaquettes’ incised with figurative imagery dating to 26–14 ka from Leang Bulu Bettue, Sulawesi. These new findings, together with the recent discovery of rock art dating to at least 40 ka in this same region, overturns the long-held belief that the first H. sapiens of Southeast Asia–Australasia did not create sophisticated art and further cements the importance of this behaviour for our species’ ability to overcome environmental and social challenges.
Source: Portable art from Pleistocene Sulawesi | Nature Human Behaviour
See also:
- Indonesian rocks show ubiquity of ancient human art | Cosmos, 17 March 2020
- Portable rock art ‘social glue’ for early humans in Ice Age | Griffith University, 17 March 2020
- ‘Portable’ Stone Age artworks found for the first time in South-East Asia | ABC Science, 17 March 2020
- First pocket-sized artworks from Ice Age Indonesia show humanity’s ancient drive to decorate | The Conversation, 17 March 2020
