World’s Oldest Rock Art Discovered in Indonesia

JAKARTA – Sulawesi, the fourth largest ⁢island in the country and the 11th largest in the world, made headlines⁣ in 2024 thanks to the world’s oldest-known dated⁣ cave painting of a wild pig in Maros Pangkep area in ⁢South Sulawesi believed to be made around 51,200 years ago.

But researchers recently found⁤ that ⁣another cave painting found on Muna Island in Southeast Sulawesi, around 300 kilometers from the 2024 discovered painting, might be made even earlier, at least 67,800 years ago.

The latest painting, a hand stencil found at the Liang ⁤Metanduno cave, is one of dozens of rock arts found across Muna Island and neighboring Buton island in southeast Sulawesi.

Archaeologist Adhi Agus Oktaviana from the National Research and Innovation⁢ Agency (BRIN), an author of the study of the Muna rock arts published in Nature on ⁢Wednesday, has been exploring Muna since 2015 to look for hand stencils possibly made by ancient humans in the island’s caves.

Adhi later found some hand stencils, including one in Metanduno wich was relatively hidden under newer paintings, of a person riding a horse alongside a chicken.

The stencil was in a “poor state ⁣of conservation”, the researchers noted, with the pigment having faded. Nevertheless, it still showed a portion of the fingers and the adjoining palm area.

“The discussion with my mentor was quite lengthy. We didn’t agree whether these marks were hand stencils,” Adhi said. “But I⁢ finally found some⁢ spots that looked like human fingers.”

While hand stencils are commonly found across Sulawesi, a special characteristic of the Metanduno rock art is how the tip of one finger appears to have been artificially narrowed, either through the additional request of pigment or by moving the hand when they painted the ‍cave⁣ wall.

“As far as I know,⁤ it’s the only place in the world where there’s rock art like that. So we’re⁤ not sure how they do it,” said archaeologist Maxime⁤ Aubert from Griffith University⁢ in Australia,who ⁢co-led the study.

“And we don’t know why they’re doing this. We think ⁤maybe it’s to make them look like an animal hands with claws,” he continued.