The oldest cave paintings discovered in the world … – The Point

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One of the latest pride of old Europe was to have invented the art of painting with to Cro-Magnon. Must disillusioned. At best, we can now speak of a co-discovery. Indeed, in the journal Nature , Australian and Indonesian paleontologists say they have found some old cave paintings from 40,000 years in Indonesia …! What would make them date from the same time that the first representations drawn in French and Spanish caves. A myth collapses.

In truth, the paintings of these caves were known Indonesian recent years. What is new is the dating using a new technique given as unquestionable. The caves in question are located on the island of Sulawesi, located to the south of Borneo. They lie in the path of early migrations that led modern humans from Africa to Australia, reached here some 50,000 years.

A pig deer Malay

Paleontologists have dated a total of twelve handprints and two animal forms in seven caves. The oldest “paint” is a cavity that is performed by the 39 900 years of spraying a powder pigment affixed on a hand against the wall.

In Europe, the oldest pattern is a red circle drawn in the cave of El Castillon (Spain) dated to 40,800 years. The oldest Indonesian animal for its part a babiroussa, a kind of pig deer Malay, displaying 35,400 years. Making it, according to its discoverers, one of the oldest – if not the oldest – figurative paintings in the world. By comparison, the oldest European animal found in the Chauvet cave and dated to 32,410 years.

Simultaneous Invention

The island of Sulawesi is full of caves decorated with handprints and various animals. The artists expressed themselves for twenty thousand years. Besides, this wall art was greatly expanded in the Pacific, Borneo, and even Australia, with paintings dating back over 35,000 years. In some Australian caves were found pigments shaped by the hand of man that is 40 000 to 50 000 years.

The invention of painting simultaneously in two human populations at the antipodes of the other necessarily calls paleoanthropologists. Can we blame the only chance? The authors of the discovery of Sulawesi wonder if the first Homo Sapiens do not already practiced rock painting even before leaving Africa, maybe 70,000, 80,000 or even 100,000 years here. It remains to find evidence on the walls of caves along the first migration routes between Africa, Europe and Australia.

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