“Ancient Cave Art: Is This 44,000-Year-Old Masterpiece Revealing Humanity’s First Tale?”
They found that the calcite popcorn on one of the painting’s wild pigs began forming at least 43,900 years ago while deposits on two of the scene’s anoas dated back to more than 40,900 years ago, making the painting one of the oldest cave drawings found to date and — possibly — the oldest painted story in the world.
It is still challenging for archaeologists to accurately date rock paintings like the one found at Sulawesi’s Leang Bulu’Sipong 4 cave site due to the tools used to create such artworks. These paintings are often made with raw materials like charcoal which could have formed much earlier than the drawings themselves.
It is partly why figurative artworks in Europe, like the ones in the Chauvet Cave in France and the El Castillo in Spain which date between 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, were believed to be much older than those found in the caves across Africa, Asia, and Australia.
“It has always been assumed that the tradition of figurative painting arose in Europe,” says Alistair Pike, an archaeologist at England’s University of Southampton. “This shows the tradition does not have its origins in Europe.”
AlamyThe Lascaux Caves in southwestern France feature clearly narrative scenes in rock art dated to around 17,000 years ago.
Indeed, in 2014, many other rock paintings were found in locations around Sulawesi and its neighboring island of Borneo dating further back than the European Ice Age. So far, there have been at least 242 caves or shelters in Sulawesi where scientists have discovered such images.
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