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Handprints on the walls of a cave in an unexplored area of Indonesia may be the oldest rock art ever studied, dating back at least 67,800 years ago.
Sepia print analysis Indonesia and Australia researchers on the island sulawesi The pieces were made by blowing paint onto hands leaning against cave walls, leaving outlines. Some of the fingertips have also been tweaked to look sharper.
This prehistoric art form shows Indonesia The island is home to a thriving arts and culture. To figure out the age of the paintings, researchers measured the mineral crusts that formed on top of the artwork.
When independent paleoanthropologist Genevieve von Persinger saw the new study, she said she “let out a little scream of joy.”
“It fits everything I’ve been thinking about,” she said.
Indonesia is known to have some of the world’s earliest cave paintings, and scientists have analyzed countless examples of ancient art across the globe, including simple markings on bones and stones, dating back hundreds of thousands of years. Crosshatch markings on a rock in South Africa date to about 73,000 years ago.
New Art from the Southeast sulawesi are the oldest found on cave walls. The templates also represent a more complex rock art tradition, which may be a shared cultural practice, said study author Maxime Aubert of Griffith University, who published the study in the journal on Wednesday. nature.
the scientist They are eager to understand when early humans learned to create art, moving away from dots and lines to more meaningful expressions of themselves and the world around them. These cave paintings help date the dawn of human creativity.
It is unclear whose hand left the footprints. They may have come from an ancient human group called the Denisovans, who lived in the area and may have interacted with our Homo sapiens ancestors before their eventual extinction.
Or they could belong to modern humans who ventured out of Africa, perhaps wandering through the Middle East and Australia at this time. The fine details of the cave art, including the deliberately decorated fingertips, point to the human hand.
Other drawings found in the same area of the island, including figures, birds and equestrians, were found to have been created more recently, some around 4,000 years ago.
More artwork older than the handprints may be found on nearby islands. Future research may help scientists understand how these artistic traditions spread across the globe and how they became integrated into the fabric of early humanity.
“For us, this discovery is not the end of the story,” Obert said in an email. “It’s an invitation to keep looking.”