(Paris) A large red pig surrounded by three human figures: the scene was painted more than 51,000 years ago on the wall of a cave in Indonesia, making it the oldest figurative work of art in the world, according to a study.
Although modest in appearance, the drawing “clearly tells a story that constitutes the earliest known evidence of storytelling,” long predating the cave paintings at Lascaux and Chauvet in France, archaeologist Adam Brumm, one of the authors of the study published Wednesday in The Journal of the American Journal of History, explained at a press conference. Nature.
The previous record was held by a hunting scene identified by the same team of researchers in 2019, in an Indonesian cave, whose age was then estimated at nearly 44,000 years.
The latest discovery, in a nearby cave in Maros-Pangkep on the island of Sulawesi, marks “the first time we’ve gone beyond the 50,000-year barrier,” said archaeologist Maxime Aubert of Australia’s Griffith University, a co-author of the study.
The fact that early members of our species were able to tell such a “sophisticated” story through art could rewrite our understanding of Homo sapiens’ cognitive evolution, he added.
To date the work, the researchers used a new method that uses lasers and software to generate a “map” of the rock samples.
This laser ablation technique is more precise, easier, faster, less expensive and requires much smaller rock samples than the previous method, explains Maxime Aubert.
It does not allow the painting to be dated directly, but the different layers of minerals that have agglomerated on it over time. The researchers managed to access the layer closest to the painting and therefore to precisely determine its minimum age.
The team first tested the new technique on the previous record holder. They determined that the hunting scene was actually at least 48,000 years old, 4,000 years older than the 2019 dating method.
The team then tested the laser method on an undated painting, first spotted in the cave on the island of Sulawesi in 2017. Verdict: its minimum age is 51,200 years.
Description of an action
The painting, in poor condition, depicts three figures around a wild pig.
It is difficult to understand the meaning of these red images, but they do describe an action, like the enigmatic “Lascaux well scene” (21,000 years old) depicting a man with a bird’s head, knocked down by a bison.
Maxime Aubert speculates that the work was probably made by the first groups of humans who crossed Southeast Asia before arriving in Australia, around 65,000 years ago. “It’s probably only a matter of time before we find older samples,” the archaeologist thinks.
The earliest known human-made images are simple lines and patterns in ochre, discovered in South Africa and dating back 100,000 years.
There is then a “huge gap” between this early art and Indonesian cave paintings, 50,000 years later, notes Maxime Aubert.
Before these discoveries in Indonesia, the first narratives were thought to have emerged in Western Europe, notably with the discovery of a 40,000-year-old ivory sculpture of a man with a lion’s head in Germany.
The estimated date of the Indonesian rock art is “quite astonishing” because it is much older than what has been found elsewhere, including in Europe, said Chris Stringer, an anthropologist at the Natural History Museum in London, who was not involved in the study.
The Nature study’s findings appear robust, but will need to be confirmed by more in-depth dating, he said.
“In my opinion, this discovery reinforces the idea that figurative art was first produced in Africa 50,000 years ago and that the concept spread as our species spread,” he said. “If this is true, much new evidence from other regions, particularly Africa, has yet to emerge.”