A faded outline of a hand found on the walls of a limestone cave on Muna Island, Indonesia, may be the world’s oldest known rock art, according to a team of archaeologists. The stencil, created by spraying ochre over a hand pressed against the cave wall, has been dated to at least 67,800 years old.
The discovery, made by a team from Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, led by Professors Maxime Aubert and Adam Brumm, provides new insights into the migration patterns of early humans and the development of artistic expression.
The ancient hand stencil was found among a rich collection of cave paintings on Sulawesi’s south-eastern peninsula, including a narrative scene depicting three human-like figures and a wild pig, dated to at least 51,200 years old.
“There’s a lot of rock art out there, but it’s really difficult to date,” said Professor Aubert. “When you can date it, it opens up a completely different world. It’s an intimate window into the past, and an intimate window into these people’s minds.”
The researchers believe the narrow, pointy fingers of the hand stencil may have been an intentional modification, suggesting a symbolic meaning behind the artwork. However, some experts have questioned whether this should be considered “complex” and argue that other long-extinct human species, such as Neanderthals or Denisovans, could have been responsible for similar hand stencils found in Spanish caves.
The discovery of this ancient rock art on Sulawesi provides further evidence that early humans travelled along a northern route across the Indonesian archipelago to reach Australia and New Guinea, known as Sahul, at least 65,000 years ago. As sea levels were much lower at the time, land bridges opened up between some neighbouring islands, allowing for this migration.
The findings, published in the journal Nature, offer a rare glimpse into the artistic and cultural practices of our ancient ancestors, and continue to challenge our understanding of human evolution and dispersal across the Asia-Pacific region.
