In a limestone cave on Indonesia’s Muna Island, archaeologists have found rock art that’s at least 67,800 years old. That makes it the oldest reliably dated human-made art ever discovered. It’s so old that it predates what we previously understood as the oldest evidence of human-made art ever discovered by a few thousand years. The researchers published their findings in the journal Nature.
The art itself is a bit eerie. Large red blotches of paint that seem to have large, alien-like hands stenciled into their center, almost seeming closer to a discovery of ancient spray-painted graffiti done by creatures from another galaxy.
They were found in Liang Metanduno, a cave that researchers have known about for decades but couldn’t properly date until recently. Thanks to improved uranium-thorium dating techniques, scientists can now determine the age of the thin calcite crusts that form over cave paintings. Since those crusts can only form after the art is made, the images beneath them must be even older.
How Archaeologists Found The Oldest Human-Made Art Ever
All this is painting a picture of Indonesia as a vibrant hub for early humans. Archaeologist Maxime Aubert, who co-led the research, says these discoveries suggest a deep, continuous artistic tradition that tells the tale of an ancestor who has been planting roots, interacting with the environment, and communicating complex ideas through images for tens of thousands of years.
The cave sits along a proposed migration route that early modern humans likely used as they moved from mainland Asia toward the ancient landmass called Sahul, which once connected Australia and New Guinea. Finding complex, deliberate works of early human art along this corridor tells scientists that these early humans reached Australia at least 65,000 years ago, already equipped with the vital cultural tools that were likely shared with them by other migrants.
As populations grew and social networks expanded, so too did human expression, along with the desire to express one’s identity and lived experience through art. The discovery offers researchers another big hint that there is likely much more, probably much older evidence of human-made art out there waiting to be discovered.
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