In the 1950’s, cave art was discovered on the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi.  According to the New York Times, this cave art was originally thought to be around 10,000 years old, but researchers are starting to have second thoughts.  Newer estimates date the art at about 40,000 years old– just as old as the earliest European cave paintings.  Just like at Chauvet in France, the presence of calcite over the paintings helped to determine their age using a Uranium dating technique.  Many archaeologists are quite excited about this new date, because it confirms early human migratory patterns to Southeast Asia.  Earlier estimates were hard to come by, because researchers were forced to analyze Aboriginal paintings in Australia.  Though the Aborigines arrived on the continent about 50,000 years ago, their earliest works of art started to appear only 30,000 years ago.

Researchers are baffled that cave art has appeared in so many locations across the world.  It was thought that early humans would have developed their own sense of art and creativity  as they expanded across the globe, but this is not entirely the case.  Along with the hand prints found at Sulawesi, a representation of a pig deer was found as well.  In the style of the Homo sapiens at Chauvet and Lascaux, these early humans also chose to represent the natural world around them.  It was long thought that human artistic creativity emerged from Europe around 40,000 years ago, but the discovery of these paintings in Indonesia prove otherwise.

Archaeologists are optimistic about finding new forms of artwork worldwide.  If this knack for artistic expression was in fact present in the earliest Homo sapiens to leave Africa, there is no reason to doubt the existence of other sites like Sulawesi and Chauvet.  This theory, that an artistic intuition stems from single source, provides an entirely new view of early human development, and helps to further set our ancestors apart from their Eurasian counterparts, the Neanderthals.

After reading this article, I’m curious about the lack of older cave art in Australia.  What did the Aborigines do differently so that their art was not able to survive?  Was it technique?  Location?  Environmental Factors?  In any case, it’s disappointing that we are not able to gain further insight into the lives of the first homo sapiens to reach Australia.  Sure, we have a pretty good history spanning to about 30,000 years ago, but maybe we’re missing something crucial in the years before that.

 

Here’s the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/09/science/ancient-indonesian-find-may-rival-oldest-known-cave-art.html?_r=0