World’s oldest cave art discovered in Indonesia’s Muna island

The oldest paintings ever discovered by archaeologists on the Indonesian island of Muna could be up to 67, 800 years old, making them the oldest known paintings in the world.

Researchers from Indonesia and Australia discovered that the tan-colored drawings were created by rubbing pigment over hands against cave walls, leaving a outline, according to scientists’ findings on Wednesday.

Since 2015, archaeologist Adhi Agus Oktaviana from Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) has been searching for hand stencils in the Muna island region of Sulawesi province.

In the cave where a person rides a horse alongside a chicken, Adhi discovered the hand stencils, which have since been dated, beneath more recent paintings.

Adhi initially said it was difficult to demonstrate to his coworkers that the stencils were human fingers, but he “finally discovered some spots that looked like human fingers.”

Additionally, some of the fingertips were altered to appear sharper.

The oldest hand stencil that has been studied here is distinctive because it was only discovered in Sulawesi, according to Maxime Aubert, an expert in archaeological science at Griffith University in Australia, who assisted in the study’s publication on Wednesday.

According to Aubert, “the tips of the fingers were carefully reshaped so that they appeared pointed.”

Adam Brumm, a co-author of Aubert’s book and an archaeologist at Griffith University, claimed it appeared that the people who painted the hands were attempting to represent something else.

“It almost seemed as though they were purposefully trying to turn this image of a human hand into something else, perhaps an animal claw,” said Brumm.

We don’t know what that meant, but it is clear that they did have some deeper cultural significance. He said, “I think it had something to do with these ancient peoples’ complex symbolic relationship with the animal world.”

By examining the uranium content of the mineral layers that gradually formed atop the pigment, the researchers determined the image’s minimum age.

The researchers laser-zapped the layers of rock with a laser to compare the uranium-containing rock to a more stable radioactive element called thorium after collecting five-millimeter samples of small clusters of calcite that had formed on the walls of the limestone caves.

According to Aubert, this “very precise” method provided the scientists with a precise minimum age for the painting.

Additionally, the researchers discovered that numerous times over a long period of time rock art was performed in the Muna caves. According to Aubert, some of the ancient art was still visible 35, 000 years later.

The original art was discovered by the same team in the Sulawesi region in 2024, and it is also more than 15 000 years older.

Along with neighboring East Timor and Australia, the area around Indonesia is known for some of the world’s oldest archaeological discoveries.

Adhi said the cave paintings provide fresh proof for the theory that Sulawesi was a place for early humans.

According to the Jakarta Post, “it also shows that our ancestors were not only great sailors,” Adhi said, “but also artists.”

According to archaeological evidence that dates back at least 60 000 years, Aboriginal people living in Australia have one of the oldest continuous living cultures on earth.