44,000 year old cave painting thought to be world's oldest story
Category: Anthropology & Archeology
Via: buzz-of-the-orient • 5 years ago • 24 commentsBy: Donna Rachel Edmunds
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
44,000 year old cave painting thought to be world's oldest story
The hunting scene is thought to be the oldest known narrative piece of art yet discovered.
A cave painting dating back to nearly 44,000 years is seen in Leang Bulu' Sipong 4 limestone cave in South Sulawesi
(photo credit: COURTESY OF INDONESIA'S NATIONAL RESEARCH CENTRE FOR ARCHAEOLOGY/GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY/HANDOUT VIA REU)
A 44,000-year-old wall painting found in a cave in Indonesia is thought to be the oldest recorded story yet found.
The red image, covering a panel approximately five meters wide, appears to show a buffalo-like animal called an anoa and wild pigs being hunted by human-like figures using ropes and spears. However, in an enigmatic twist that has researchers scratching their heads, the human figures also feature snouts and tails.
"I've never seen anything like this before," said Adam Brumm, an archaeologist at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, who presented the finding in the journal Nature .
"I mean, we've seen hundreds of rock art sites in this region - but we've never seen anything like a hunting scene," he added.
The art was found in a cave called Leang Bulu'Sipong 4, in southern Sulawesi, an Indonesian island east of Borneo. At least 242 caves or shelters in Sulawesi have been found to contain primitive imagery, with new sites being found every year.
Recounting the moment he first saw pictures of the image after a colleague climbed a fig tree to access the cave , Brumm said: "These images appeared on my iPhone. I think I said the characteristic Australian four-letter word out very loud."
The team from Griffith University was able to date the drawing by analyzing calcite "popcorn" that had built up on the paint.
Radioactive uranium present in the mineral decays over time to thorium at a known rate. Measuring the quantities of each isotope present in the samples allowed the experts to estimate the age of the depiction.
Calcite on a pig began to form at least 43,900 years ago, they discovered, while that on two buffalo first formed 40,900 years ago, making the image by far the oldest narrative art yet discovered.
"Previously, rock art found in European sites dated to around 14,000 to 21,000 years old were considered to be the world's oldest clearly narrative artworks," the researchers reported in Nature .
It could also be the oldest known depiction of an animal, narrowly edging out a cave painting in Borneo which was found to be 40,000 years old.
However, it is not the oldest known piece of art. That title belongs to a small fragment of rock found in South Africa, which features cross-hatched lines etched onto the rock surface with a red ochre "crayon."
Archaeologist Christopher Henshilwood told Reuters that that image in its entirety was "probably more complex," adding that, "the abrupt termination of all lines on the fragment edges indicates that the pattern originally extended over a larger surface."
Tags
Who is online
445 visitors
It's amazing to be living at a time when discovery includes reaching farther and farther into the past, farther and farther into space, and further and further extending the limits of technological prowess.
Amazingly, this was done about 38,000 years before Adam was created.
LOL
Interesting how all of the new "oldest" are found in Indonesia. Cradle of life?
Very interesting trying to piece together the (presumed) migration from Africa :
Live and learn with science.
Cradle of representational art, quite possibly. Cradle of life, not so much.
Still an amazing find, and who knows maybe more to follow
Well obviously it was painted by Satan to mislead and confuse us. Duh!
It is. New discoveries are ever changing what we deem to be scientific knowledge.
And has also PROVEN existing theories, such as Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
Amazing discovery. It seems that the past few years more and more discoveries have been made in what is now SE Asia.
in an enigmatic twist that has researchers scratching their heads, the human figures also feature snouts and tails.
Why are they scratching their heads over this? If you find your prey is recognizing you from a distance and all your weapons are close range, then you dress up as your prey or as something your prey isn't afraid of. BTW it's a teaching document, so showing all your hunting techniques shouldn't be a surprise.
That's an excellent observation - I've learned something from that. Thank you.
Your welcome. This maybe considered meta, but I figured to be talking about the origins, the how, the why of the paintings and most of the comments ended up mocking others beliefs.
As for the origins (which would also explain the why), your life expectancy wasn't very long and the death of the hunting males might get wiped out in a battle with other tribes so you had to put something in place for the younger ones to learn from so it wouldn't be forgotten.
Yet some will keep believing that the earth is only 6,000 yrs. old. because they don't do science because it's evil
Such an ignorant and closed mentality just boggles the mind. I suppose some people cannot reconcile the fact that their beliefs are demonstrably erroneous or have holes poked in them by science. It's sad really.
" ... a worldwide conspiracy by godless scientists ... "
And they promote "pseudoscience."
That's what they say about anthropogenic global warming.
Yup, and of biochemical evolution.
And then we have the flat-Earthers who make the same claim.
Gotta wonder what shapes such minds.
I'll guess religion.
...into flat-shaped minds.
I would have suggested a vise, but for some I think a pair of pliers would do the trick.