A painted outline of a human hand inside a cave on the Indonesian island of Muna represents what researchers are calling the oldest known example of cave art in the world, created at least 67.800 years ago.
The reddish-colored pattern has faded over time and is barely visible on the cave wall, but it still represents an early achievement of human creativity during a period when our species was spreading around the world after emerging in Africa, Reuters reports. The people responsible for this cave art, the researchers said, were part of a population that moved from mainland Asia to the islands of what is now Indonesia, and may have continued on to Australia.
The hand stencil was discovered in the limestone cave of Liang Metanduno on Muni, an island off the southeastern peninsula of the large island of Sulawesi, east of Borneo. Researchers determined the minimum age of the image by analyzing small amounts of the element uranium in mineral layers that gradually formed over the pigment.
The painting, like others like it that have been discovered, was created by blowing pigment over a hand pressed against a rock, the researchers said.
"The oldest hand template described here is special because it belongs to a style found exclusively in Sulawesi. The fingertips are carefully reshaped to look pointed," said Maxime Ober, an expert in archaeological science at Griffith University in Australia, who helped lead the research published in the journal Nature.
"It's as if they were deliberately trying to turn this image of a human hand into something else - perhaps an animal claw. It clearly had some deeper cultural meaning, but we don't know what it was. I suspect it had something to do with the complex symbolic relationship that these ancient people had with the animal world," said Griffith University archaeologist and study co-author Adam Brum.
The hand stencil is older than a cave painting depicting three human-like figures interacting with a pig, dated at least 51.200 years old, found at the Leang Karampuang site in southwest Sulawesi. It is also older than the hand stencil cave art at Maltraves, Spain, which dates back about 64.000 years and is attributed to Neanderthals.
Although the newly described image was barely discernible, researchers found nearly identical images in much better condition elsewhere in the area, indicating that this motif was not a one-off. In earlier research on Sulawesi, researchers have also documented depictions of human figures with animal features, dated to at least 48.000 years ago.
The researchers said the Liang Metanduno cave is a tourist site, visited mainly for its large and much younger paintings, attributed to farmers speaking Austronesian languages who appeared in the region about 4.000 years ago.
The scientists said their discovery of the age of the Liang Metandun hand stencils could provide insight into how and when Australia was settled by Homo sapiens. They said it was likely that the people who created the art at Liang Metandun and across Sulawesi were part of a larger population that later spread through the region and eventually reached Australia, Reuters reported.
"For many years, scientists have debated when and how the first humans arrived in Australia. One idea is called the 'short chronology'. It suggests that humans arrived in Australia around 50.000 years ago. This view has been supported by numerous archaeological sites across Australia that have been dated to this time. Earlier genetic studies of DNA from indigenous Australians and Papuans also seemed consistent with this later arrival," Ober said.
"The second idea is the 'long chronology', which proposes that humans arrived in Australia much earlier, around 60.000 to 65.000 years ago," he added.
The newly dated cave art represents the oldest direct evidence of modern humans in the region. Recent genetic research also supports an earlier arrival of humans in Australia, closer to 60.000 years ago, Ober said.
"Together, archaeological and genetic evidence now strongly supports the 'long chronology' and shows that the ancestors of Australia's indigenous peoples passed through Southeast Asia and created symbolic art as they moved," Ober said.
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