Asian cave paintings challenge Europe’s claim to oldest art

The silhouette of a hand on a cave wall in Indonesia is 40,000 years old, showing that Europe was not the birthplace of art as long believed, researchers said on Wednesday. The Indonesian and Australian team said the discovery throws up two theories, both of which challenge the conventional wisdom around the history of human artistic expression. Art either arose independently but simultaneously in different parts of the world – or was brought by Homo sapiens when he left Africa for a worldwide odyssey.

Europeans can’t exclusively claim to be the first to develop an abstract mind anymore.

Anthony Dosseto of Australia’s University of Wollongong

The paintings were found in the karst caves of Sulawesi, an island just east of Borneo with four long peninsulas that radiate like flower petals. Archaeologists have known about the cave art for decades. They’ve also found shellfish, animal bones, pigment-stained stone tools and even ochre “crayons” inside these caverns. The previous oldest cave art was from El Castillo cave in northern Spain, including a hand stencil dated 37,300 years ago, according to Wil Roebroeks of Leiden University, who wrote a comment on the study.

Compared with Europe, Asia has seen little fieldwork, and new finds will keep on challenging what we think we know about human evolution.

Wil Roebroeks of Leiden University, who wrote a comment on the study.

Arts cave art