Earliest Narrative Cave Art identified in Indonesia dates to over 50,000 years ago.

The Indonesian island of Sulawesi has been shown, in a series of paper published over the last 10 years, to harbour some of the oldest known cave art in the world [1-3]. The most recent work, published by Oktaviana et al. in Nature on 3rd July 2024 [4] used laser ablation uranium series imaging of calcite deposits in the limestone caves of Maros-Pangkep, South Sulawesi to re-date some of the earliest known rock art and analyse a newly discovered cave art scene.

The latter was painted at least 51,200 years ago and appears to be composed of three human figures interacting with a pig. The scene suggests not just representational but narrative art and is significantly older than the oldest known European rock art in the Chauvet Cave in southeastern France which is thought to be around 30,000 to 32,000 years old.

It is widely thought that the presence of representational art is indicative of a capacity for abstract thought and these early dates and presence in caves over 6,000 miles apart suggests that its origins predate the separation of these human populations following migration out of Africa 60,000 years ago or earlier. Indeed, there is powerful evidence of symbolic behaviour in the form of engraved ochre pieces from c. 75,000 to 100,000 year old levels at Blombos Cave, Western Cape, South Africa [5]. Comparative studies suggest that geometric symbols pre-dated representational art and persisted over wide geographic and temporal spans [6].

Whilst interpretation of these images is always likely to be challenging, the evidence seems to imply that at least some form of what we might generically call higher consciousness developed in humans at least by the latter part of the Middle Paleolithic period [7,8].

References

1. Aubert M et al. Pleistocene cave art from Sulawesi Indonesia. Nature2014: 515, 223-227.

2. Aubert M et al. Earliest hunting scene in prehistoric art. Nature 2019: 576, 442-444.

3. Brumm A et al. Oldest cave art found in Sulawesi. Sci Adv 2021: 7, eabd4648.

4. Oktaviana AA et al. Narrative cave art in Indonesia by 51,200 years ago. Nature published online 3rd July 2024.

5. Henshilwood CS et al. Engraved ochres from the Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave South Africa. Journal of Human Evolution 2009: 57, 27-49.

6. von Petzinger G. The First Signs. Atria, New York 2016.

7. Lewis-Williams D. The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art. Thames and Hudson, London 2004.

8. Clottes J. What is Paleolithic Art? Cave Paintings and the Dawn of Human Creativity. University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 2016.