Possibly the oldest representation of animals in the world

Rock art

Image of a Sulawesi pustular pig in the Leang Tedongnge cave. (Image: Maxime Aubert)

Indonesia is known for its ancient cave paintings. Now researchers have discovered a representation of warthogs on the largest Indonesian island of Sulawesi, which they have dated to an age of at least 45,500 years. The rock painting is thus possibly the oldest surviving depiction of animals in the world. At the same time, the picture can be interpreted as the earliest evidence of the presence of anatomically modern people on Sulawesi.

According to excavations, the Indonesian island of Sulawesi was settled by ancestors more than 100,000 years ago. This is indicated by stone artifacts that are between 118,000 and 194,000 years old and very likely originate from now extinct human species. It is not yet clear when the first modern humans reached Sulawesi. Some very old cave paintings with figurative representations, which are attributed to Homo sapiens, are known. The oldest to date has been dated 43,900 years ago.

Warthogs as a motif

Researchers led by Adam Brumm from Griffith University in Australia have now discovered two previously unknown rock paintings in two limestone caves on Sulawesi. Both show the Sulawesi pustular pig, a warthog that was already widespread on the island in the days of early humans and is still found there today. The motif is not unusual: “Pictures of pigs or pig-like creatures are by far the most common motifs,” explain the researchers. More than 80 percent of the depictions of animals found in the region show what was then important hunting prey. The pigs were painted with red and purple mineral pigments. The characteristic warts on the face are clearly recognizable.

Brumm and colleagues dated the images using uranium isotope dating. The decay of the radioactive isotope uranium is used to determine how old mineral and rock samples are. The researchers used tiny limescale deposits on the paintings. Their result: the younger of the two pictures, a pig depiction from the Leang Balangajia 1 cave, is at least 32,000 years old. The older one, a 136 by 54 centimeter pig from the Leang Tedongnge cave, was created at least 45,500 years ago.

Earliest reference to Homo sapiens in the region

This well-preserved pig motif is surrounded by other, less complete depictions of animals, which, according to the researchers, also depict Sulawesi pustular pigs. As far as can be reconstructed from the remains, a total of four pigs appear to be facing each other in pairs, although only barely recognizable residues have survived from one. “We suspect that this cave painting is supposed to depict an episode of social interaction between at least three, possibly even four individual pigs,” write Brumm and colleagues. There are also two outlines of human hands above the best-preserved pig.

“The picture from Leang Tedongnge, with a proven minimum age of 45,500 years, is now the earliest known dated work of art in Sulawesi,” the researchers write. “In addition, this picture of a Sulawesi pustular pig appears to be the world’s oldest surviving depiction of an animal.” It may even be the oldest known figurative depiction that modern humans have created. Older cave paintings were discovered in Spain and dated 65,000 years ago. However, they are abstract and are not ascribed to modern humans, but to Neanderthals.

The researchers cannot say with absolute certainty whether the drawings were actually made by Homo sapiens. “This seems to be the most likely explanation, however, given the complexity of these early representational works of art and the fact that figurative representations have been attributed only to Homo sapiens everywhere else in the world,” they write. “If so, then the dated pig picture from Leang Tedongnge seems to provide one of the earliest, if not the earliest, evidence of the presence of our species in the Wallacea region between Asia and Australia.”

Source: Adam Brumm (Griffith University, Queensland) et al., Science Advances, doi: 10.1126 / sciadv.abd4648

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