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By Maggie Fox
The oldest figurative rock art may not belong to France or Spain, but to Borneo, researchers said Wednesday.
They found old hand prints, representations of people dancing and a drawing of what appears to be a wild cattle dating from 20,000 to 50,000 years ago in a series of caves difficult to access on the island.
Animal stencils may be 40,000 years old or older, putting them in the running to become the oldest figurative art work, researchers have reported in the journal Nature.
"The oldest rock art image we have dated is a large painting of an unidentified animal, probably a species of wild cattle still found in the jungles of Borneo. The minimum age is around 40,000 years old. It's the oldest known figurative work, "said Maxime Aubert, Australian University Griffith, head of the study, in a statement.
Even though they are not the absolute record holders in terms of age, the images show that people all over the world are doing similar works in cellars at the same time.
"It is now obvious that rock art appears in Borneo at about the same time as the first forms of artistic expression appear in Europe, associated with the arrival of the artist. a modern man (45,000 to 43,000 years ago), "wrote Aubert and his colleagues. .
The limestone caves are found in a heavily forested area of Kalimantan Province in Borneo, Indonesia. Archaeologists have explored the hard-to-reach caves, known to be richly decorated by man.
The new dating methods show that they are much older than anyone would have thought. The team used the uranium dating of calcium carbonate deposits that have accumulated around and around the paintings.
Some of the oldest dating involved a painting of what appeared to be a type of cattle, painted in an orange-red color.
"The picture is incomplete and the animal depicted is therefore not clear, but it seems like it's a large ungulate possessing possibly a pole." spear coming out of his flank, "wrote the team. It can represent a banteng, a species that still exists today.
Other works of art date back to around 20,000 years ago and the results indicate that people have been using remote caves for millennia.
Much of it clearly made sense, the researchers said.
"Many of these stencils are partly filled with painted lines, dashes, dots and small abstract signs that eventually represent tattoos or other marks of social identification, and in some cases, the Hand stencils are connected by painted mulberry lines that form intricate trees. as motifs, which perhaps symbolize kinship ties, "they wrote.
"Some characters are described in narrative scenes as hunting or pursuing small deer or engaged in enigmatic social or ritual activities (eg," dancing ")," they added.
Modern humans have appeared in Africa and spread across the globe in many waves, reaching Australia through the Asia-Pacific region about 50,000 to 70,000 years ago. The researchers differ on this subject.
Modern Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea would have been part of the route taken.
The same team announced in 2014 to have discovered 40,000-year-old cave art works on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
"Who are the ice age artists of Borneo and what has happened to them is a mystery," said Pindi Setiawan, co-director of the team, archaeologist at the Bandung Institute of Technology who worked on the study team.
Older hominid species also lived in the area, including the "hobbit" Homo floresiensis, whose remains date back 700,000 years.
And modern humans are not the only known cave artists. The rock art discovered in modern Spain was apparently made by Neanderthals 64,000 years ago, researchers reported earlier this year.
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