What the Oldest Known Cave Painting Reveals About Early Humans (and What It Doesn’t)

via Discover Magazine, 17 April 2021: A feature on the recent discovery of ancient rock art in Sulawesi and contextualising the Indonesian finds against the ones in France and Africa.

In 2018, researcher Maxime Aubert and his crew ventured into a hidden valley about an hour’s walk from the nearest road on the spider-like Indonesian island of Sulawesi. They had just slept on the porch of a local family’s rice farm after a few glasses of ballo, a fermented sugar palm alcohol that the area is famous for.

Just across the valley, Aubert, an archaeologist and geochemist at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, could glimpse the Leang Tedongnge cave. The team traveled to see it after hearing reports from Basran Burhan, an Indonesian archaeologist. Aubert, who studies ancient cave art, had previously studied what were possibly the world’s oldest-known manmade examples from as long as 44,000 years ago — but, as he would later learn, the art here at Leang Tedongnge would date back even further.

Soon after, Aubert and his colleagues entered the Leang Tedongnge cave, which was used by the nearby family to store farm equipment. Just above a small ledge inside, they found a drawing of three pigs painted in red ochre, shown with plenty of hair and warts. Above the pigs appeared two stencils of people’s hands. The illustration may have depicted a fight, Aubert says.

Source: What the Oldest Known Cave Painting Reveals About Early Humans (and What It Doesn’t) | Discover Magazine