Discovered: An outline of a hand that’s at least 67,800 years old

By Katie Hunt, CNN

(CNN) — The outline of a hand made with red pigment on the wall of a cave in Indonesia at least 67,800 years ago may be the world’s oldest rock art, according to a new study.

The faded hand stencil, along with other spectacular cave paintings on the island of Sulawesi, were likely made by early humans who were part of a population that spread into a lost continent known as Sahul, which today encompasses Australia, Papua New Guinea and parts of Indonesia.

“They’re made with ochre. They put their hand there, and then they sprayed pigment. We can’t tell which technique they used. They could have put pigment in their mouth and sprayed it. They could have used some sort of instrument,” said Maxime Aubert, an archaeologist and geochemist from Griffith University in Australia. Aubert, who was the senior author of a study on the findings that published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, described the discovery as “thrilling and humbling.”

The minimum age of the hand stencil, which was modified at some point to create distinctive narrowed fingers, is older than dozens of other examples of prehistoric art found preserved in the region’s intriguing limestone caves. Another example is a scene involving part human and part animal figures hunting a warty pig, the oldest evidence of storytelling in art history.

“What we are seeing in Indonesia is probably not a series of isolated surprises, but the gradual revealing of a much deeper and older cultural tradition that has simply been invisible to us until recently,” said Aubert.

The new study surveyed 44 sites in southeastern Sulawesi and securely dated 11 rock art motifs, including seven hand stencils. The team found the oldest hand stencil in Metanduno cave on Muna island. The cave also features much fresher images of horses, deer and pigs that were painted perhaps 3,500 to 4,000 years ago, the study said. These paintings have long been a draw for tourists.

Dating cave art is tricky and the team used a technique that analyzed chemical traces in mineral crusts that form on top of the paintings, sometimes called cave popcorn, to provide a minimum age for the art.

The rock art in Sulawesi is also older than Europe’s famed cave art, such as Lascaux in France, and a hand stencil suspected to have been made by Neanderthals in a Spanish cave.

Prehistoric Picassos

The prehistoric people who made the hand stencils were most likely early members of our own species, Homo sapiens, who lived in Southeast Asia during the ice age. At that time, sea levels were much lower, and the region looked very different, the study noted.

Aubert said that after the humans made the hand stencils, they narrowed the fingers, making them look like claws. He regarded the negative imprints of hands as examples of art that reveal complex behavior— even though the stencils aren’t figurative or narrative like the captivating scene of a warty pig hunt.

For example, he said the hands were marking places that mattered to the artists. “This was not a casual activity. It required planning, shared knowledge and cultural meaning.”

The hand stencils were materially different from a 73,000 year-old stone flake uncovered in a South African cave that featured lines, which some had called the oldest known drawing. Aubert noted the lines were abstract and might not have been an intentional image.

Paul Pettitt, a professor of palaeolithic archaeology who studies prehistoric art at the University of Durham in the United Kingdom, said that the date given to the hand stencil was a minimum age. It could be much older, he said, and it shouldn’t be assumed that the hand stencil was made by Homo sapiens. Other human species, such as the poorly understood Denisovans, likely lived in the region, explained Pettitt, who wasn’t involved in the study.

“It’s certainly unclear whether the narrow/pointy fingered hand stencils were deliberately modified or simply the result of moving the finger, but to call this complex is rather overinterpreting the hand stencil,” he said via email.

“Before writing grand narratives about the complexity and success of Homo sapiens we really should consider other, potentially more interesting explanations of this fascinating phenomenon.”

A perilous journey

The presence of extremely old cave art in Sulawesi is also helping archaeologists answer hotly debated questions about how and when early humans reached a lost land known as Sahul. The land once connected Australia with the island of New Guinea, which today is divided into Papua New Guinea and Indonesian Papua.

Some scholars think humans arrived in Sahul about 50,000 years ago, but others hypothesize they arrived at least 65,000 years ago. They also debate the route they likely took. The age of the Sulawesi cave art suggests that the ancestors of the first Australians were potentially in Sahul in line with the earlier timeline and that these early humans took a northerly route via Sulawesi, which remained an island at that time.

Such a journey would have been perilous, involving the first planned, long-distance sea crossings undertaken by our species, the study said. The route likely involved crossing from Borneo (then part of a landmass known as Sunda) to Sulawesi and other islands that form a region scientists call Wallacea, before reaching Sahul.

Martin Richards, a research professor in archaeogenetics at the University of Huddersfield in the United Kingdom, who uses ancient DNA and genetic evidence from living people to understand how and when humans first reached Australia, said the new study was “extremely interesting.”

“It provides the first clear evidence for (by implication, from the sophistication of the rock art) the presence of modern Homo sapiens in Wallacea around 70,000 years ago,” Richards, who was not involved in the new study, said in an email.

“An arrival in Sahul by around 60,000 years ago, a presence in Sulawesi in the preceding 10,000 years would make a lot of sense and supports the ‘northern-route’ model for the first settlement of Sahul,” he said.

Other experts suggest that people may have used a southern route, moving through Java, Bali and the Lesser Sunda Islands before crossing to northwestern Australia.

Until now, there has been little archaeological evidence along either route to clearly support one pathway over the other, Aubert said.

“During the Ice Age, sea levels were lower, but people still had to travel by boat between islands, and Sulawesi was likely a key stopping point,” he said.

“The amount and age of rock art found here suggest this was not a marginal place, but a cultural heartland where early humans lived, travelled, and expressed ideas through art for tens of thousands of years.”

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