An analysis published in the journal Nature suggests that the scene in which humans interact with a pig is a milestone in history. What is the oldest story ever recorded by humans? Scientists now think it is a story as old as time – of humanity’s place in nature – painted deep in a cave in Indonesia.
It is a scene of humans interacting with a pig, painted on a wall with red and black pigments. The light of a flashlight makes the figures dance and jump, animating the scene into a story.
A new analysis, published July 3 in the journal Nature, has found that this sophisticated scene of human-animal interactions is about 51,200 years old, making it tens of thousands of years older than other cave art found in places like Lascaux Cave in France.
“We, as humans, define ourselves as a story-telling species. These [pinturas] are the first evidence that we do. This shows that painters were conveying more information than just static images,” says Maxime Aubert, an archaeologist at Griffith University in Australia who led the study.
The oldest narrative found so far
Aubert’s team studied the artistic layers covering the walls of a limestone cave called Leang Bulu Sipong 4 on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia.
Previous work in the cave has shown that Homo sapiens, or modern humans, visited the site for thousands of years, leaving their stories on the walls between 27,000 and 44,000 years ago.
The art is preserved behind a layer of calcium carbonate that has formed on the cave wall over thousands of years, trapping the art like an insect in amber.
Previous dating techniques, called uranium-thorium chronology, have dated the oldest art to about 44,000 years old. But a new version of the method, which uses a laser to collect rock samples, has allowed for a “more accurate and efficient” way to date the painting, Aubert says.
The new method pushed back the dating of the cave art by 4,000 years, to about 48,000 years ago.
Aubert’s team also used the method on an undated section of figurative art in the nearby Leang Karampuang Cave. The scene shows humans interacting with a pig-like animal.
The analysis found that the art is 51,200 years old, making it the oldest man-made scene discovered to date.
50,000 years ago, a “golden point” in human evolution
However, Indonesian rock art is not the oldest in the world: that title belongs to Cueva de los Aviones in Spain.
But the art preserved in Indonesian caves is much more sophisticated, says George Nash, an archaeologist at the University of Coimbra in Portugal who was not involved in the study.
“The rock art from Spain is mostly handprints, but the rock art from Indonesia is much more sophisticated and probably has more narrative. The question is, what’s going on in Sulawesi, Indonesia, with the sophisticated art being produced at this time? Very little art has been dated older than 50,000 years,” Nash tells DW.
The 50,000-year mark is seen by archaeologists as a “golden point” in human evolution because it occurred when “the most adventurous modern humans moved into East Asia, Indonesia, and Australia, which were all connected by a giant landmass at the time,” Nash explains. Other figurative art has also been found on the nearby island of Borneo.
Modern techniques for studying cave art, coupled with genetic analysis of ancient remains, have mapped the dispersal of modern humans across the globe with remarkable precision.
Nash said that 10 years ago the field was very Eurocentric, but new, broader approaches are putting us “on the verge of discovering some wonderful things about the movement of Homo sapiens around the world and our relationships with Neanderthals.”
For example: Nash believes that interspecies relationships may have influenced human cave art. “Fifty thousand [anos atrás] “It’s a melting pot where migrating humans and Neanderthals learned from each other,” he says. “We don’t know what the speech meant, but one of the results may have been more sophisticated art.”
Is this really a cave story?
The authors said their findings suggest that Homo sapiens developed a rich storytelling culture in Indonesia long before our evolution. Artists composed scenes to tell visual stories about relationships between humans and animals.
Although João Zilhão, an archaeologist at the University of Lisbon, praised the study’s methods, he was more critical of the interpretation.
“The authors provide no evidence that the different things they dated constitute an integrated whole. ‘Narrative’ and ‘storytelling’ are found in the article by Aubert et al., not in the art itself,” he told DW by email.
George Nash understands that rock art had narrative characteristics. “It’s like the symbol of a cross. Any Christian can form a complex narrative from a simple figurative drawing,” he says.
The same goes for Australian Aboriginal art, he continues, where the simplicity of an animal’s form can tell a complex story.
Searching for fossils in the North Sea
While we have not yet grasped the true meaning of this rock art, Nash strongly suspects that the drawing had a ceremonial or ritual value because it was found in the back of the caves, where storytelling likely took place.
“These are intangible evidences, but they are suited to the use of various approaches, such as archaeology, anthropology and philosophy, to understand the past,” he says.
Nash says it’s great that Aubert’s team has analyzed the rock art with more accurate dating methods, adding that more research on the topic is needed.
“I bet we’d find art that’s over 60,000 years old,” he said. “If we did, it would completely change our understanding of modern humans.”
Source: Terra
Rose James is a Gossipify movie and series reviewer known for her in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the latest releases. With a background in film studies, she provides engaging and informative reviews, and keeps readers up to date with industry trends and emerging talents.
