[Paper] Narrative cave art in Indonesia by 51,200 years ago

via Nature, 03 July 2024: Boom! I was told about these new dates some weeks ago but I couldn’t share it to anyone yet. A new paper by Adhi Agus et al. using laser-ablation U-series imaging has re-dated the cave art at Maros-Pangkep, Sulawesi, to over 51,200 years ago. This makes it the earliest known example of narrative and representational art, depicting human-animal interactions, significantly predating similar European art. Congrats to the team for this brilliant discovery!

Previous dating research indicated that the Indonesian island of Sulawesi is host to some of the oldest known rock art1,2,3. That work was based on solution uranium-series (U-series) analysis of calcite deposits overlying rock art in the limestone caves of Maros-Pangkep, South Sulawesi1,2,3. Here we use a novel application of this approach—laser-ablation U-series imaging—to re-date some of the earliest cave art in this karst area and to determine the age of stylistically similar motifs at other Maros-Pangkep sites. This method provides enhanced spatial accuracy, resulting in older minimum ages for previously dated art. We show that a hunting scene from Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4, which was originally dated using the previous approach to a minimum of 43,900 thousand years ago (ka)3, has a minimum age of 50.2 ± 2.2 ka, and so is at least 4,040 years older than thought. Using the imaging approach, we also assign a minimum age of 53.5 ± 2.3 ka to a newly described cave art scene at Leang Karampuang. Painted at least 51,200 years ago, this narrative composition, which depicts human-like figures interacting with a pig, is now the earliest known surviving example of representational art, and visual storytelling, in the world3. Our findings show that figurative portrayals of anthropomorphic figures and animals have a deeper origin in the history of modern human (Homo sapiens) image-making than recognized to date, as does their representation in composed scenes.

Source: Narrative cave art in Indonesia by 51,200 years ago