Recently, in a major breakthrough, scientists found out that a cave painting in Indonesia is possibly the world’s oldest such artwork. An international team of researchers has concluded that the painting dates back at least 51,200 years.

Cave paintings shed light on how humans came to possess unique abstract thoughts. (Representative photo credit: Unsplash)

New Delhi: Over the years, the discovery of several cave paintings in different parts of the world has given us an indication of the artistic sensibility of men in pre-historic times. Those paintings, often created by Homo sapiens and also Denisovans and Neanderthals, shed light on their history and how humans came to possess unique abstract thoughts. These paintings are considered examples that establish prehistoric humans’ creativity. Recently, in a major breakthrough, scientists found out that a cave painting in Indonesia is possibly the world’s oldest such artwork. An international team of researchers has reportedly concluded that the painting dates back at least 51,200 years.

Know about the world’s oldest artwork

The artwork which is described as the world’s oldest has been discovered on the ceiling of a limestone cave in Indonesia’s Sulawesi and as per reports, this dissples the longstanding notion that Europe was not the birthplace of the cave art. A study about the discovery and research has been published in the journal ‘Nature’ and its co-author Renaud Joannes-Boyau has explained that it possibly depicts three small human-bird hybrids surrounding a massive wild pig which was being possibly hunted down.

The pig measures 36 inches by 15 inches and is standing upright along with three smaller human-like figures and they were painted painted in a single shade of dark red pigment. The cave also has other images of pigs. While it was in 2017 that samples of the painting were taken from the Leang Karampuang cave, it was in 2024 that a team of Indonesian and Australian researchers used a new dating technique that found the artwork to be the oldest in the world. Interestingly, the previous record holder was a painting in another cave on the same Sulawesi island. As part of the new approach, the researchers used a laser to date a type of crystal called calcium carbonate that formed naturally on top of the painting.

Sulawesi has hundreds of caves with some of them having the oldest cave paintings known to use. Due to the island’s unique weather and topography, the paintings are preserved well. The previously oldest painting found in the island’s Leang Tedongnge cave also depicts a wild pig in a narrative scene and was created at least 45,500 years ago. While researchers have yet to fully decipher the meaning of these paintings, they have surely opened up a new horizon when it comes to cave paintings by our ancestors.