Archeologists have recently discovered a 43,000-year-old warty pig painting on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia.
Warty Pig Hunting Scene
Indonesia is known to archeologists as a cornucopia of surviving cave art. The earliest dated cave painting in a report published in the journal Science Advances was a warty pig (Sus celebensis) from the Sulawesi island.
The limestone karsts image is dated 43,900 years ago based on Uranium-series dating.
The study reports two figurative cave art. The oldest is said to be a minimum of 45,500 years old.
According to researchers, the animal paintings from Leang Tedongnge are the earliest known representational work in the world.
Maxime Aubert, a co-author from Australia's Griffith University, said that the images were found in 2017 by doctoral student Basran Burhan as reported by The Guardian.
The pre-Austronesian painting had two handprints found above the pig's hindquarters that appear to face two other pigs that are only partially preserved.
"The pigs appear to be observing a fight or social interaction between two other warty pigs," says Adam Brumm, co-author.
Measuring at 136 x 54 centimeters, the Sulawesi warty pig was depicted using a dark red ochre pigment with a short crest of upright hair, and horn-like facial warts are characteristic of adult males.
Aubert identified calcite deposits formed on top of the painting, then used uranium-series isotopes.to date the deposits to 45,500 years confidently
"The people who made it were fully modern; they were just like us, all of the capacity and the tools to do any painting they liked," said Aubert.
Cave paintings help archeologists fill in the faps bout our understanding of early human migration. It is an established fact that early humans reached Australia roughly 65,000 years ago. However, they would have had to cross the Indonesian islands known as "Wallacea."
The site represents the oldest evidence of human activity in Wallacea. Still, researchers hope to find evidence of earlier human activity in the area, which would fill the final piece of the Australian settlement puzzle.
The team believes the pre-Austronesian artwork was made by Homo sapiens, as opposed to other extinct humans species such as Denisovans. Researchers are hoping to extract DNA samples from residual saliva used to create the red pigment.
Before the warty pig, the oldest cave painting was located in Europe and dates back to 40,000 years ago, says CNN. 35,000 years ago, cave art became more intricate, depicting animals such as horses and pigs.
Researchers hypothesize that creating figurative art referencing the real world began before Homo sapiens migrated from Africa to Europe and Asia more than 60,000 years ago. Or that these abilities emerged once humans have spread across the globe.
Either way, the pre-Austronesian warty pig painting, the oldest cave painting discovered, gives scientists a look at how human civilization lived in the past.
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