According to Griffith University scientist Adam Brumm, another study leader,” The three human-like figures and the pig figure were evidently not depicted in separate parts of the rock art panel.”
Instead, the contrast of the images, how they are positioned in relation to one another, and the way in which they are interacted were evidently intentional, and it conveys an undeniable sense of motion. There is , everything happening , between these numbers. A tale is , being told. Obviously, we do n’t know what that story was”, Brumm , added.
The researchers compared the age of another Sulawesi cave painting from a page called Leang Bulu ‘ Sipong 4, which featured visible part-human and part-animal numbers hunting animals and dwarf bull, using the same dating technique to reevaluate the age of the same piece of art. It turned out to be at least 48, 000 years older, upwards of 4, 000 decades earlier than previously thought.
” We, as people, establish ourselves as a types that tells stories, and these are the oldest evidence of us doing that”, Aubert said.
In the Leang Karampuang artwork, the conversation between the individual- like figures and the pig, a species also inhabiting the island, is somewhat mysterious.
At least one of these figures appears to be reaching toward the pig’s face, and two of these figures are holding objects of some kind. Another figure is positioned directly above the pig’s head in an upside down position”, Brumm said.
Little is known about the people who created the Sulawesi cave paintings. According to Aubert, the paintings may be older than the minimum age that the new tests have determined, and they may also date the first Homo sapiens wave to pass through the area and reach Australia about 65, 000 years ago on their way out of Africa.
Until now, the oldest- known cave painting was one at Leang Tedongnge cave, also in Sulawesi, from at least 45, 500 years ago.
The Leang Karampuang painting, the researchers said, predates the cave paintings of Europe, the earliest of which is at El Castillo in Spain, dating to about 40, 800 years ago.
Some scientists believe that a hand-scraped painting from Spain’s Maltravieso cave was created around 64, 000 years ago and that Neanderthals were responsible for. Other scientists have disputed the painting’s age and claim that Homo sapiens was the creator.
” This discovery of very old cave art in Indonesia makes the case that, as had long been assumed, Europe was not the birthplace of cave art. It also suggests that storytelling was a much older part of human history, and the history of art in particular, than previously recognised”, Brumm said.
” The earliest Sulawesi rock art is not’ simple,'” Aubert added. It is “quite advanced and illustrates the mental capacity of the time”