We explore an Indonesian cave painting and why the date of the earliest cave paintings keeps getting older. In this post, you will find the YouTube video exploring these artifacts and a full video transcript (with relevant sources and links).

YouTube Video

YouTube Video Transcript

Here, you will find the complete transcript of the video in the previous section with hyperlinked references/citations.

Intro

What do you see in this image? You probably noticed the bird-like image here, but what about this handprint or this one? If you felt those handprints were hard to see, you’re not alone. But those easy-to-miss handprints are at least 67,800 years old, which makes them the oldest known cave paintings of representational art we’ve ever found so far.

Hi! I’m Dr. Smiti Nathan, and I’m an archaeologist. In this video, we’re going to explore this artifact and why the date of the earliest cave paintings keeps getting older.

The Artifact

These handprints come from a cave called Liang Metanduno on the island of Muna, which is off the southeastern tip of Sulawesi in Indonesia. 

The reason they were so easy to miss is that they’re genuinely faint – even in person – and there are bolder cave paintings around and on top of them. 

But once researchers noticed this handprint, they began to notice more. In fact, in this image, there are 3 handprints, but we’re focusing on this pair. The researchers gave measurements for one of the prints, and it covers a rough area of 14x10cm. They’re made with a reddish-brown pigment and the researchers think that someone likely stenciled a hand onto the cave wall. 

But what’s interesting here is that the tip of one finger was deliberately narrowed. At first, this might seem like a mistake or simply a slip of the hand, but narrowed fingers are a recurring motif seen in cave paintings in the Sulawesi region across thousands of years. In fact, the 3rd handprint in this image outside the pair could be at least 35,000 years younger than our artifact. This means that people were coming to this cave for tens of thousands of years and creating art that depicted hands.

Dating

But you might be wondering, how do we know how old these paired handprints are? Well, you can’t directly date inorganic pigment, but the team was able to date something sitting on top of the artifact – ancient coralloid speleothems. These are basically mineral deposits that accumulate over thousands of years and the ones on top of this artifact were made from calcite. This is great because, unlike inorganic pigments, we can date calcite using a method called laser-ablation Uranium-series dating.

So the researchers did just that. The speleothem turned out a U-series date of 71,6 thousand years ago (ka) ± 3,8 thousand years. If we use the lower end of that range, the minimum age of that speleothem is 67,8 thousand years ago. Since the speleothem is on top of the artifact, we can say that the cave painting is at least 67,800 years old. It could be older, but we just don’t have any additional evidence to support an older date. But at the moment, this artifact is the oldest known piece of representational art made by Homo sapiens. 

Representational Art

That title is detailed for a reason. 

Representational art means art that depicts an actual thing. We do have examples of older art, but they are more abstract. For example, at Blombos Cave in South Africa, we’ve found evidence of people scratching crosshatches and geometric patterns in ochre in contexts dating to around 73,000 years ago.

And Homo sapiens weren’t the only ones creating hand drawings. At the Maltravieso cave in Spain, there is an array of hand stencils depicted on the cave walls. One in particular has a minimum age of 66,700 years ago, and the researchers think it was created by relatives of ours – Neanderthals.

Keeps Getting Older

However, myself and other archaeologists believe that we’re probably going to find even older cave paintings in the coming years. In fact, in 2019 the record for oldest figurative art also came from Sulawesi and had a minimum date of 43,900 years ago, but then was redated a few years later using more advanced techniques, which yielded a minimum date of 48,000 years ago. Then in 2024, another Sulawesi cave painting took the record with a minimum date of 51,200 years ago.

So yes, we’re developing and applying new dating techniques, but we’re also giving things a closer look. The hand prints at Liang Metanduno are easy to miss at first glance. In fact, tourists and researchers who visited the cave over the years probably didn’t see it at first, either. However, once one researcher noticed them and collaborated with other researchers, new and ground-breaking insights were made. And I think this is only the beginning. 

Outro

While we don’t know whose hands were depicted or what these prints might have meant, the act of pressing your hand to a wall and leaving an outline behind seems to be a very human act that connects us across tens of thousands of years. 

This video is part of our Artifact of the Day series, where we take a quick look at one intriguing object from the past. If you’d like to watch another, check out the video here.  

Credits

Brooke Norton: Series Lead, Co-Producer, Researcher, Scriptwriter

Noor Hanania: Lead Video Editor, Logo Designer

Anya Gruber: Peer Reviewer

Smiti Nathan: Director, Co-Producer, Support Video Editor, Researcher, Scriptwriter

Patreon Supporters

Thank you to our paid Patreon members for supporting the creation of this video:

Nancy Fulton, Giancarlo Annese, Thomas Martin, Stuart A. Griffin, Tagg, Ann Brookens, Diana Madden, Cole Guinn, GeometryGirl, John McGrath, Cris Nally, Mick Bradley

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