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A team of archaeologists have discovered the oldest known cave painting of animals in the world.
It was found in Leang Tedongnge Cave, in a remote valley on Sulawesi Island, Indonesia.
The image represents a wild pig that would have been drawn 45,500 years ago.
It is painted with a life-size dark red ocher pigment and appears to be part of a much larger narrative scene.
Their discovery provides the oldest evidence that there has been human settlements in the region.
“The people who did it were completely modern, they were like us, they had the ability and the tools to paint any picture they wanted”, explains Maxime Aubert, co-author of the report published in the journal Science Advances.
As a dating specialist, Aubert identified a calcite deposit formed above the painting and used isotope dating system with uranium to determine that the deposit was 45,500 years old.
This makes the painting at least as old.
“But it could be a lot older because the dating we use only dates the calcite on top,” he added.
Human footprints
The report says that the painting, that mide 136 cm by 54 cm, represents a warty pig, a type of wild pig, which appears to have horns, two characteristics of the adult males of the species.
There is two hand prints on the spine of the pig which seems to be in front of two other specimens of this species, even if only a part of them is preserved.
“He the pig seems to be watching a fight or social interaction between two other warty pigs, ”added Adam Brumm, co-author of the article.
To make the handprints, the artists would have had to place their hands on a surface before spitting pigment on it, the researchers said.
The team hopes also extract DNA samples.
Painting is the artistic representation of the oldest figure in the world, but it is not the oldest art produced by man.
In South Africa, there is an image similar to a hashtag (#) that would have been made 73,000 years ago.
It would be the oldest known drawing.
Wallacea
Sulawesi is in a key location.
It is the largest island in a group that scientists often refer to as Wallacea, after the great naturalist of the 19th and 20th centuries Alfred Wallace.
The group is seated on a dividing line, on either side of which are very different animals and plants.
But the meaning of Wallacea is also that it must have been a place of settlement for modern humans during his trip to Australia.
“We know they were on this landmass around 65,000 years ago, so it’s reasonable to assume that they were also in Sulawesi at the same time or even earlier,” says BBC Science correspondent Jonathan Amos .
“This raises the tantalizing theory that figurative art exists, either in Sulawesi, or in the neighboring islands, which are more than 45,500 years old, ”he adds.
“The limestone hills, located an hour’s drive from Makassar, they have countless nooks and crannieslike the ones in Leang Tedongnge cave, ”he says.
Therefore, Amos thinks it is likely more discoveries in the future.
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