The world’s oldest rock art was found in Indonesia

from Indonesia the oldest known work of rock art has been found. The outline of the hand in the reddish image is estimated to be at least 67,800 years old.

Science journal In Nature The news agencies Reuters and AFP write about the study by Indonesian and Australian researchers, published on Wednesday.

The faded, barely visible image was found in Liang Metanduno’s limestone cave on Muna Island, which administratively belongs to neighboring Sulawesi. The cave is a tourist attraction, usually visited for its larger and more recent paintings.

The image was made by blowing color, probably red clay, onto a hand placed against a stone. The fingertips were carefully shaped to be sharp.

“It’s almost as if the creators deliberately tried to change this image of a human hand into something else – perhaps an animal claw. Clearly they had some deeper cultural meaning, but we don’t know what. My guess is that it had something to do with the complex symbolic relationship these ancient people had with the animal world,” says Griffith University archaeologist and co-author of the study Adam Brumm for Reuters.

Discovery is older than the previous oldest known rock art, i.e. the image of a hand found in Maltravieso, Spain. It is, at least by some estimates, about 64,000 years old and linked to Neanderthals.

In addition, the discovery is almost 17,000 years older than the previous cave painting known to be the oldest, which shows three human figures and a pig. The cave painting in question, also found in Sulawesi, is at least 51,200 years old.

Researchers say the discovery could provide clues about how and when Australia was settled. The artists were likely part of a larger population that spread to Indonesia from Asia and eventually reached Australia.