via The Debrief, 27 July 2024: A recent study has dated the cave art in Sulawesi, Indonesia, to 51,200 years ago, making it the world’s oldest known figurative art. The author raises intriguing possibilities about the artists being ancient hominins rather than modern humans, but this was never raised in Adhi et al’s original paper and indeed the date of the rock art – while old – is still comfortably within the time that anatomically modern humans were in Southeast Asia.
Of course, revising the dates of the cave art on Sulawesi raises new questions about what species of ancient hominin had actually served as the ancient artists in residence. According to most commonly accepted timelines, modern humans are believed to have left Africa as recently as 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, although possibly as early as 90,000 years ago.
Considering those nearer estimates for when these ancient migrations might have begun, it does raise questions about how likely it is that modern humans could have been present on Sulawesi by the time the newly redated cave art was produced. The earliest known modern human remains on the island date back to no earlier than 25,000 years ago, although evidence of human presence in the form of rock shelters and stone tool use has been found that suggests humans may have been there far earlier, even as much as 118,000 years ago.
