The discovery suggests that storytelling was one of the key parts of early human artistic culture in Indonesia.
A painting on a cave wall on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi appears to be the oldest evidence of pictorial stories in art, scientists from an Australian university and Indonesian scientific institutions have announced.
Scientists from Australia’s Griffith University, Indonesia’s National Research Institute and Innovation Agency (BRIN) and Southern Cross University discovered a cave drawing depicting human figures and a wild boar.
The cave is located on the island of Sulawesi in an area dominated by carbonate bedrock, mainly limestone, and by analyzing the thin layers of calcium carbonate that formed on the surface of the image, scientists were able to determine that it was created 51,200 years ago, making it the oldest, reliably dated example of cave art in the world and the earliest narrative art.
Our results are surprising: none of the known Ice Age images in Europe are anywhere near as old as this one, except for some controversial sites in Spain. This is also the first time rock art in Indonesia has exceeded 50,000 years of age, said research leader Adhi Agus Oktaviana.
Adam Brumm, who led the research with him, said the discovery leads to the conclusion that storytelling was one of the key parts of early human artistic culture in Indonesia.
People have probably been telling stories for much longer than those 51,200 years, but since words cannot be fossilized, we can only rely on indirect evidence such as painting scenes from life in an artistic way and Sulawesi is now the oldest such evidence known to archaeology, said Brumm.
