Discussion around prehistoric art is important in understanding the history ofHomo sapiens and howhuman beings have come to have unique abstract thoughts. Some point to these prehistoric paintings as possible examples of creativity, spirituality, and sentimental thinking in prehistoric humans.
Nearly 350 caves have now been discovered in France and Spain that contain art fromprehistoric times. Initially, the age of the paintings had been a contentious issue, since methods likeradiocarbon dating can produce misleading results if contaminated by other samples,[7] and caves and rocky overhangs (whereparietal art is found) are typically littered with debris from many time periods. But subsequent technology has made it possible to date the paintings by sampling the pigment itself, torch marks on the walls,[8] or the formation ofcarbonate deposits on top of the paintings.[9] The subject matter can also indicate chronology: for instance, thereindeer depicted in the Spanish cave ofCueva de las Monedas places the drawings in the last Ice Age.
Inside of the Cave of El Castillo inPuente Viesgo,Cantabria (Spain). Dating back to 40,000BC, El Castillo hosts the earliest figurative cave painting in Europe known to date.
The earliest known European figurative cave paintings are those of theCave of El Castillo in Spain, which a 2012 study using uranium-thorium dated back to at least 40,000 BC.[14][15] Prior to this announcement, it was believed that the oldest figurative cave paintings were those of theChauvet Cave in France, dating to earlier than 30,000 BC in theUpper Paleolithic according toradiocarbon dating.[16] Some researchers believe the drawings are too advanced for this era and question this age.[17] More than 80 radiocarbon dates had been obtained by 2011, with samples taken from torch marks and from the paintings themselves, as well as from animal bones and charcoal found on the cave floor. The radiocarbon dates from these samples show that there were two periods of creation in Chauvet: 35,000 years ago and 30,000 years ago.[18] One of the surprises was that many of the paintings were modified repeatedly over thousands of years, possibly explaining the confusion about finer paintings that seemed to date earlier than cruder ones.[citation needed]
An artistic depiction of a group of rhinoceros was completed in theChauvet Cave 30,000 to 32,000 years ago.
In 2009,cavers discovered drawings inColiboaia Cave in Romania, stylistically comparable to those atChauvet.[19] An initial dating puts the age of an image in the same range as Chauvet: about 32,000 years old.[20]
In Australia, cave paintings have been found on theArnhem Land plateau showingmegafauna which are thought to have been extinct for over 40,000 years, making this site another candidate for oldest known painting; however, the proposed age is dependent on the estimate of the extinction of the species seemingly depicted.[21] Another Australian site,Nawarla Gabarnmang, has charcoal drawings that have been radiocarbon-dated to 28,000 years, making it the oldest site in Australia and among the oldest in the world for which reliable date evidence has been obtained.[22]
Other examples may date as late as the Early Bronze Age, but the well-knownMagdalenian style seen atLascaux in France (c.15,000 BC) andAltamira in Spain died out about 10,000BC, coinciding with the advent of theNeolithic period. Some caves probably continued to be painted over a period of several thousands of years.[23]
The next phase of surviving European prehistoric painting, therock art of the Iberian Mediterranean Basin, was very different, concentrating on large assemblies of smaller and much less detailed figures, with at least as many humans as animals. This was created roughly between 10,000 and 5,500 years ago, and painted in rock shelters under cliffs or shallow caves, in contrast to the recesses of deep caves used in the earlier (and much colder) period. Although individual figures are less naturalistic, they are grouped in coherent grouped compositions to a much greater degree. Over a long period of time, the cave art has become less naturalistic and has graduated from beautiful, naturalistic animal drawings to simple ones, and then to abstract shapes.
A 2018 study claimed an age of 64,000 years for the oldest examples of non-figurative cave art in theIberian Peninsula. Represented by three red non-figurative symbols found in the caves ofMaltravieso, Ardales andLa Pasiega,Spain, these predate the appearance of modern humans in Europe by at least 20,000 years and thus must have been made byNeanderthals rather thanmodern humans.[10]
In November 2018, scientists reported the discovery of the then-oldest known figurative art painting, over 40,000 (perhaps as old as 52,000) years old, of an unknown animal, in the cave ofLubang Jeriji Saléh on theIndonesian island ofBorneo.[5][6] In December 2019, cave paintings portraying pig hunting within theMaros-Pangkep karst region inSulawesi were discovered to be even older, with an estimated age of at least 51,200 years. This finding was recognized as "the oldest known depiction ofstorytelling and the earliest instance of figurative art in human history."[27][11] On July 3, 2024, the journalNature published research findings indicating that the cave paintings which depictanthropomorphic figures interacting with a pig and measure 36 by 15 inches (91 by 38 cm) inLeang Karampuang are approximately 51,200 years old, establishing them as the oldest known figurative art paintings in the world.[28][29]
Cave artists used a variety of techniques such as finger tracing, modeling in clay, engravings,bas-reliefsculpture, hand stencils, and paintings done in two or three colors. Scholars classify cave art as "Signs" or abstract marks.[30] The most common subjects in cave paintings are large wild animals, such asbison,horses,aurochs, anddeer, and tracings of human hands as well as abstract patterns, calledfinger flutings. The species found most often were suitable for hunting by humans, but were not necessarily the actual typical prey found in associated deposits of bones; for example, the painters ofLascaux have mainly left reindeer bones, but this species does not appear at all in the cave paintings, whereequine species are the most common. Drawings of humans were rare and are usually schematic as opposed to the more detailed and naturalistic images of animal subjects. Kieran D. O'Hara, geologist, suggests in his bookCave Art and Climate Change that climate controlled the themes depicted.[31]Pigments used include red and yellowochre,hematite,manganese oxide andcharcoal. Sometimes the silhouette of the animal was incised in the rock first, and in some caves all or many of the images are only engraved in this fashion,[citation needed] taking them somewhat out of a strict definition of "cave painting".
Similarly, large animals are also the most common subjects in the many small carved and engraved bone or ivory (less often stone) pieces dating from the same periods. But these include the group ofVenus figurines, which with a few incomplete exceptions have no real equivalent in Paleolithic cave paintings.[32] One counterexample is a feminine figure in theChauvet Cave, as described in an interview withDominique Baffier inCave of Forgotten Dreams.[33]Hand stencils, formed by placing a hand against the wall and covering the surrounding area in pigment result in the characteristic image of a roughly round area of solid pigment with the negative shape of the hand in the centre, these may then be decorated with dots, dashes, and patterns. Often, these are found in the same caves as other paintings, or may be the only form of painting in a location. Some walls contain many hand stencils. Similar hands are also painted in the usual fashion. A number of hands show a finger wholly or partly missing, for which a number of explanations have been given. Hand images are found in similar forms in Europe, Eastern Asia, Australia, and South America.[34] One site inBaja California features handprints as a prominent motif in its rock art. Archaeological study of this site revealed that, based on the size of the handprints, they most likely belonged to the women of the community. In addition to this, they were likely used during initiation rituals in Chinigchinich religious practices, which were commonly practiced in theLuiseño territory where this site is located.[35]
In the early 20th century, following the work ofWalter Baldwin Spencer andFrancis James Gillen, scholars such asSalomon Reinach,Henri Breuil andCount Bégouën [fr] interpreted the paintings as 'utilitarian'hunting magic to increase the abundance of prey.[36]Jacob Bronowski states, "I think that the power that we see expressed here for the first time is the power of anticipation: the forward-looking imagination. In these paintings the hunter was made familiar with dangers which he knew he had to face but to which he had not yet come."[37]
Another theory, developed byDavid Lewis-Williams and broadly based on ethnographic studies of contemporaryhunter-gatherer societies, is that the paintings were made by paleolithicshamans.[38] The shaman would retreat into the darkness of the caves, enter into a trance state, then paint images of their visions, perhaps with some notion of drawing out power from the cave walls themselves.
R. Dale Guthrie, who has studied both highly artistic and lower quality art and figurines, identifies a wide range of skill and age among the artists. He hypothesizes that the main themes in the paintings and other artifacts (powerful beasts, risky hunting scenes and the representation of nude women) are the work of adolescent males, who constituted a large portion of cave painters, based on surrounding hand print analysis.[39][verification needed] However, in analyzing hand prints and stencils in French and Spanish caves, Dean Snow of Pennsylvania State University has proposed that a proportion of them, including those around the spotted horses in Pech Merle, were of female hands.[40]
Analysis in 2022, led by Bennett Bacon, an amateur archaeologist, along with a team of professional archeologists and psychologists at theUniversity of Durham, includingPaul Pettitt andRobert William Kentridge,[41] suggested that lines and dots (and a commonly seen, if curious, "Y" symbol, which was proposed to mean "to give birth") onupper palaeolithic cave paintings correlated with the mating cycle of animals in alunar calendar, potentially making them the earliest known evidence of aproto-writing system and explaining one object of many cave paintings.[42]
Polychrome cave painting of awolf, Font-de-Gaume, France
TheIgnatievka Cave in theUral Mountains, which contains the image of amammoth and 160 other paintings, is supposed to be the northernmost Paleolithic cave painting site, but its dating is problematic.[46] About 60 ochre images in a similar manner have been described from the nearby Serpievka-2 cave.[47]
Rock painting was also performed on cliff faces; but fewer of those have survived because oferosion. One example is the rock paintings ofAstuvansalmi (3,000–2,500 BC) in theSaimaa area of Finland.
WhenMarcelino Sanz de Sautuola first encountered theMagdalenian paintings of theCave of Altamira in Cantabria, Spain in 1879, the academics of the time considered them hoaxes. Recent reappraisals and numerous additional discoveries have since demonstrated their authenticity, while at the same time stimulating interest in the artistry and symbolism[49] ofUpper Palaeolithic peoples.
InIndonesia thecaves in the district of Maros inSulawesi are famous for their hand prints. About 1,500 negative handprints have also been found in 30 painted caves in the Sangkulirang area of Kalimantan; preliminary dating analysis as of 2005 put their age in the range of 10,000 years old.[51] A 2014 study based onuranium–thorium dating dated a Maros hand stencil to a minimum age of 39,900 years. A painting of ababirusa was dated to at least 35.4 ka, placing it among the oldest known figurative depictions worldwide.[13]
And more recently, in 2021, archaeologists announced the discovery of cave art at least 45,500 years old in Leang Tedongnge cave, Indonesia. According to the journalScience Advances, the cave painting of a warty pig is the earliest evidence of human settlement of the region.[52][53] It has been reported that it is rapidly deteriorating as a result of climate change in the region.[54]
Originating in the Paleolithic period,the rock art found in Khoit Tsenkher Cave, Mongolia, includes symbols and animal forms painted from the walls up to the ceiling.[55] Stags, buffalo, oxen, ibex, lions, Argali sheep, antelopes, camels, elephants, ostriches, and other animal pictorials are present, often forming a palimpsest of overlapping images. The paintings appear brown or red in color, and are stylistically similar to other Paleolithic rock art from around the world but are unlike any other examples in Mongolia.
ThePadah-Lin Caves ofBurma contain 11,000-year-old paintings and many rock tools.
TheAmbadevi rock shelters have the oldest cave paintings in India, dating back to 25,000 years. TheBhimbetka rock shelters are dated to about 8,000 BC.[56][57][58][59][60] Similar paintings are found in other parts of India as well. In Tamil Nadu, ancient Paleolithic Cave paintings are found in Kombaikadu, Kilvalai, Settavarai and Nehanurpatti. In Odisha they are found in Yogimatha and Gudahandi. In Karnataka, these paintings are found in Hiregudda near Badami. The most recent painting, consisting of geometric figures, date to themedieval period.Executed mainly in red and white with the occasional use of green and yellow, the paintings depict the lives and times of the people who lived in the caves, including scenes of childbirth, communal dancing and drinking, religious rites and burials, as well as indigenous animals.[61]
Cave paintings found at theApollo 11 Cave inNamibia are estimated to date from approximately 25,500–27,500 years ago.[62]
In 2011, archaeologists found a small rock fragment atBlombos Cave, about 300 km (190 mi) east ofCape Town on the southern cape coastline inSouth Africa, among spear points and other excavated material. After extensive testing for seven years, it was revealed that the lines drawn on the rock were handmade and from an ochre crayon dating back 73,000 years. This makes it the oldest known rock painting.[63][64][65]
Significant early cave paintings, executed inochre, have been found inKimberley andKakadu, Australia. Ochre is not anorganic material, socarbon dating of these pictures is often impossible. The oldest so far dated at 17,300 years is an ochre painting of akangaroo in theKimberley region, which was dated by carbon dating wasp nest material underlying and overlying the painting.[66] Sometimes the approximate date, or at least, anepoch, can be surmised from the painting content, contextual artifacts, or organic material intentionally or inadvertently mixed with the inorganic ochre paint, including torch soot.[8]
A redochre painting, discovered at the centre of theArnhem Land Plateau, depicts twoemu-like birds with their necks outstretched. They have been identified by a palaeontologist as depicting themegafauna speciesGenyornis, giant birds thought to have become extinct more than 40,000 years ago; however, this evidence is inconclusive for dating. It may suggest that Genyornis became extinct at a later date than previously determined.[21]
In thePhilippines atTabon Caves the oldest artwork may be a relief of a shark above the cave entrance. It was partially disfigured by a later jar burial scene.[citation needed]
TheEdakkal Caves of Kerala, India, contain drawings that range over periods from the Neolithic as early as 5,000 BC to 1,000 BC.[68][69][70]
Rock art near Qohaito appears to indicate habitation in the area since thefifth millennium BC, while the town is known to have survived to the sixth century AD. MountEmba Soira, Eritrea's highest mountain, lies near the site, as does a small successor village. Much of the rock art sites are found together with evidence of prehistoric stone tools, suggesting that the art could predate the widely presumed pastoralist and domestication events that occurred 5,000– 4,000 years ago.[71][72]
In 2002, a French archaeological team discovered theLaas Geel cave paintings on the outskirts ofHargeisa inSomaliland. Dating back around 5,000 years, the paintings depict both wild animals and decorated cows. They also feature herders, who are believed to be the creators of the rock art.[73] In 2008, Somali archaeologists announced the discovery of other cave paintings inDhambalin region, which the researchers suggest includes one of the earliest known depictions of a hunter on horseback. The rock art is dated to 1000 to 3000 BC.[74][75]
Additionally, between the towns ofLas Khorey andEl Ayo inKarinhegane is a site of numerous cave paintings of real and mythical animals. Each painting has an inscription below it, which collectively have been estimated to be around 2,500 years old.[76][77] Karihegane's rock art is in the same distinctive style as the Laas Geel and Dhambalin cave paintings.[78][79] Around 25 miles from Las Khorey is foundGelweita, another key rock art site.[77]
InDjibouti, rock art of what appear to be antelopes and a giraffe are also found atDorra andBalho.[80]
Many cave paintings are found in theTassili n'Ajjer mountains in southeastAlgeria. AUNESCO World Heritage Site, the rock art was first discovered in 1933 and has since yielded 15,000 engravings and drawings that keep a record of the various animal migrations, climatic shifts, and change in human inhabitation patterns in this part of the Sahara from 6000 BC to thelate classical period.[81] Other cave paintings are also found at theAkakus,Mesak Settafet andTadrart inLibya and other Sahara regions including: Ayr mountains, Niger and Tibesti, Chad.
TheCave of Swimmers and theCave of Beasts in southwestEgypt, near the border with Libya, in the mountainousGilf Kebir region of theSahara Desert. The Cave of Swimmers was discovered in October 1933 by theHungarian explorerLászló Almásy. The site containsrock painting images of people swimming, which are estimated to have been created 10,000 years ago during the time of the most recent Ice Age.
In 2020,limestone cave decorated with scenes of animals such asdonkeys,camels,deer,mule andmountain goats was uncovered in the area of Wadi Al-Zulma by the archaeological mission from the Tourism and Antiquities Ministry. Rock art cave is 15 meters deep and 20 meters high.[82][83]
AtuKhahlamba / Drakensberg Park,South Africa, now thought to be some 3,000 years old, the paintings by theSan people who settled in the area some 8,000 years ago depict animals and humans, and are thought to represent religious beliefs. Human figures are much more common in the rock art of Africa than in Europe.[84]
Distinctivemonochrome andpolychrome cave paintings andmurals exist in the mid-peninsula regions of southernBaja California and northernBaja California Sur, consisting ofPre-Columbian paintings of humans, land animals, sea creatures, and abstract designs. These paintings are mostly confined to the sierras of this region, but can also be found in outlying mesas and rock shelters. According to recentradiocarbon studies of the area, of materials recovered from archaeological deposits in the rock shelters and on materials in the paintings themselves, suggest that theGreat Murals may have a time range extending as far back as 7,500 years ago.[85]
Native American tribes have contributed to the makings of Californian cave art, whether it be in Northern or Baja California. TheChumash people of Southern andBaja California made paintings in Swordfish Cave. It was given its name after theswordfish that are painted on its walls and is a sacred site for religious and cultural practices of the Chumash tribe. It was under attack of demolition, which prompted the start of its conservation with cooperation between theVandenberg Air Force Base and the Tribal Elders Council of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash. These two parties were able to stabilize and conserve the cave and its art. When previously studied, there were many conclusions about how the paintings were made but not a lot of conclusions about the symbolic value of the rock art and what its meaning to the Chumash tribe. The excavation of the inside of the cave became a viewing area for archaeologists andanthropologists, specifically Clayton Lebow, Douglas Harrow, and Rebecca McKim, to find out the symbolic meaning of the art. Some of the tools that were used to make the pictographs were found in the site and were connected to the two early occupations that were in the area. This pushed back the general knowledge of understood antiquity ofrock art onCalifornia's Central Coast by more than 2,000 years.[87]
The National Institution of Anthropology and History (INAH) established inMexico recorded over 1,500 rock art relatedarchaeological monuments inBaja California. A little under 300 of the sites were connected to Native American Tribes. Throughout these 300 sites, 65% have paintings, 24% have petroglyphs, 10% have both paintings andpetroglyphs, and 1% have geoglyphs. Five of these sites located in Baja California show hand designs or paintings, and they all spread out in that area. These sites include Milagro de Guadalupe (23 imprints), Corral de Queno (6 imprints), Rancho Viejo (1 drawing), Piedras Gordas (5 imprints), and finally Valle Seco (3 imprints).[35]
It is located in northeast state ofPiauí, between latitudes 8° 26' 50" and 8° 54' 23" south and longitudes 42° 19' 47" and 42° 45' 51" west. It falls within the municipal areas ofSão Raimundo Nonato,São João do Piauí,Coronel José Dias andCanto do Buriti. It has an area of 1291.4 square kilometres (319,000 acres). The area has the largest concentration of prehistoric small farms on the American continents. Scientific studies confirm that the Capivara mountain range was densely populated in prehistoric periods.
The hand images are often negative (stencilled). Besides these there are also depictions of human beings,guanacos,rheas,felines and other animals, as well asgeometric shapes,zigzag patterns, representations of the sun, andhunting scenes. Similar paintings, though in smaller numbers, can be found in nearby caves. There are also red dots on the ceilings, probably made by submerging their huntingbolas in ink, and then throwing them up. The colours of the paintings vary from red (made fromhematite) to white, black or yellow. The negative hand impressions date to around 550 BC, the positive impressions from 180 BC, while the hunting drawings are calculated to more than 10,000 years old.[88] Most of the hands are "left hands" (that is, with thumb on the right, even though this pattern can be obtained as easily with both right and left hands, depending on whether the back or front is used)[4][89] which has been used as an argument to suggest that painters held the spraying pipe with their right hand.[90][91][92]
There are rock paintings in caves in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Burma. InThailand, caves and scarps along the Thai-Burmese border, in the Petchabun Range of Central Thailand, and overlooking the Mekong River in Nakorn Sawan Province, all contain galleries of rock paintings. InMalaysia, theTambun rock art is dated at 2000 years, and those in the Painted Cave atNiah Caves National Park are 1200 years old. The anthropologistIvor Hugh Norman Evans visited Malaysia in the early 1920s and found that some of the tribes (especially Negritos) were still producing cave paintings and had added depictions of modern objects including what are believed to be automobiles.[93] (Seeprehistoric Malaysia.)
^Art & Place: Site-Specific Art of the Americas. Editorial Director: Amanda Renshaw; Text & Expertise provided by Daniel Arsenault et al.Phaidon Press. 2013. pp. 354–355.ISBN978-0-7148-6551-5.OCLC865298990.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
^Welsh, Liz; Welsh, Peter (2000).Rock-art of the Southwest: a Visitor's Companion (1st ed.). Berkeley, CA: Wilderness Press. p. 62.ISBN0-89997-258-6.
^abValladas, Helene (1 September 2003). "Direct radiocarbon dating of prehistoric cave paintings by accelerator mass spectrometry".Measurement Science and Technology.14 (9):1487–1492.doi:10.1088/0957-0233/14/9/301.S2CID250809121.
^abD. L. Hoffmann; C.D. Standish; M. García-Diez; P.B. Pettitt; J. A. Milton; J. Zilhão; J.J. Alcolea-González; P. Cantalejo-Duarte; H. Collado; R. de Balbín; M. Lorblanchet; J. Ramos-Muñoz; G.-Ch. Weniger; A.W.G. Pike (2018)."U-Th dating of carbonate crusts reveals Neandertal origin of Iberian cave art".Science.359 (6378):912–915.Bibcode:2018Sci...359..912H.doi:10.1126/science.aap7778.hdl:10498/21578.PMID29472483. "we present dating results for three sites in Spain that show that cave art emerged in Iberia substantially earlier than previously thought. Uranium-thorium (U-Th) dates on carbonate crusts overlying paintings provide minimum ages for a red linear motif in La Pasiega (Cantabria), a hand stencil inMaltravieso (Extremadura), and red-painted speleothems in Ardales (Andalucía). Collectively, these results show that cave art in Iberia is older than 64.8 thousand years (ka). This cave art is the earliest dated so far and predates, by at least 20 ka, the arrival of modern humans in Europe, which implies Neandertal authorship."
^abcM. Aubert et al., "Pleistocene cave art from Sulawesi, Indonesia",Nature vol. 514, pp. 223–227 (9 October 2014)."using uranium-series dating of coralloid speleothems directly associated with 12 human hand stencils and two figurative animal depictions from seven cave sites in the Maros karsts of Sulawesi, we show that rock art traditions on this Indonesian island are at least compatible in age with the oldest European art. The earliest dated image from Maros, with a minimum age of 39.9 kyr, is now the oldest known hand stencil in the world. In addition, a painting of ababirusa ('pig-deer') made at least 35.4 kyr ago is among the earliest dated figurative depictions worldwide, if not the earliest one. Among the implications, it can now be demonstrated that humans were producing rock art by ~40 kyr ago at opposite ends of the Pleistocene Eurasian world."
^Pike, A. W. G.; Hoffmann, D. L.; Garcia-Diez, M.; Pettitt, P. B.; Alcolea, J.; De Balbin, R.; Gonzalez-Sainz, C.; de las Heras, C.; Lasheras, J. A.; Montes, R.; Zilhao, J. (14 June 2012)."U-Series Dating of Paleolithic Art in 11 Caves in Spain".Science.336 (6087):1409–1413.Bibcode:2012Sci...336.1409P.doi:10.1126/science.1219957.PMID22700921.S2CID7807664.."We present uranium-series disequilibrium dates of calcite depositsoverlying or underlying art found in 11 caves, including the United Nations Educational, Scientific,and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage sites of Altamira, El Castillo, and Tito Bustillo,Spain. The results demonstrate that the tradition of decorating caves extends back at leastto the Early Aurignacian period, with minimum ages of 40.8 thousand years for a red disk,37.3 thousand years for a hand stencil, and 35.6 thousand years for a claviform-like symbol.These minimum ages reveal either that cave art was a part of the cultural repertoire of the firstanatomically modern humans in Europe or that perhaps Neanderthals also engaged in painting caves."The El Castillo red stippled disk (sample O-83) was dated to41.40±0.57 ka (95% CI, corrected).Table 1: Ages are corrected for detritus by using an assumed232Th/238U activity of1.250±0.625 and230Th/238U and234U/238U at equilibrium.See also:Callaway, Ewen (14 June 2012)."Spain claims top spot for world's oldest cave art: Nature News & Comment".Nature. Nature.com.doi:10.1038/nature.2012.10838. RetrievedJanuary 19, 2017.
^Clottes, Jean (October 2002)."Chauvet Cave (ca. 30,000 B.C.)".Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved11 May 2013.
^Chlachula, Jiri; Serikov, Yuriy B. (July 2022). "Utilitarian art and art-related objects in the Urals' Palaeolithic".L'Anthropologie.126 (3) 103049.doi:10.1016/j.anthro.2022.103049.
^Aubert, M.; et al. (2014). "Pleistocene cave art from Sulawesi, Indonesia".Nature.514 (7521):223–227.Bibcode:2014Natur.514..223A.doi:10.1038/nature13422.PMID25297435.S2CID2725838.using uranium-series dating of coralloid speleothems directly associated with 12 human hand stencils and two figurative animal depictions from seven cave sites in the Maros karsts of Sulawesi, we show that rock art traditions on this Indonesian island are at least compatible in age with the oldest European art. The earliest dated image from Maros, with a minimum age of 39.9 kyr, is now the oldest known hand stencil in the world.
^Jaroff, Leon (1997-06-02)."Etched in Stone".Time. Archived fromthe original on February 4, 2013. Retrieved2008-10-07.Wildlife and humans tend to get equal billing in African rock art. (In the caves of western Europe, by contrast, pictures of animals cover the walls and human figures are rare.) In southern Africa, home to the San, or Bushmen, many of the rock scenes depicting people interpret the rituals and hallucinations of the shamans who still dominate the San culture today. Among the most evocative images are those believed to represent shamans deep in trance: a reclining, antelope-headed man surrounded by imaginary beasts, for example, or an insect-like humanoid covered with wild decorations.
^Simekm Jan F.; Alan Cressler; Nicholas P. Herrmann; Sarah C. Sherwood (2013). "Sacred landscapes of the south-eastern USA: prehistoric rock and cave art in Tennessee".Antiquity.87 (336):430–446.doi:10.1017/S0003598X00049048.S2CID130296519.
^Steele, James; Uomini, Natalie (2005)."Humans, tools and handedness"(PDF). In Roux, Valentine; Bril, Blandine (eds.).Stone Knapping: the Necessary Conditions for a Uniquely Hominin Behaviour. Cambridge, UK: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge. p. 234.ISBN1-902937-34-1.OCLC64118071.Archived(PDF) from the original on 2021-10-16. Retrieved2021-04-23.
^Weber, George."The Semang".The Negrito of Malaysia. Archived fromthe original on 24 July 2013. Retrieved11 May 2013.
^Oktaviana, Adhi Agus; Setiawan, Pindi (2015). "Pola Gambar Cadas di Situs Gua Harimau, Sumatera Selatan".Pusat Arkeologi Nasional:1–10.
^Fauzi, Mohammad Ruly; Intan, Fadhlan S.; Wibowo, Andy S. (2019). "Newly discovered cave art sites from Bukit Bulan, Sumatra: Aligning prehistoric symbolic behavior in Indonesian prehistory".Journal of Archaeological Science.24:166–174.Bibcode:2019JArSR..24..166F.doi:10.1016/j.jasrep.2019.01.001.
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![Cave of Pettakere, Bantimurung district (kecamatan), South Sulawesi, Indonesia. Hand stencils estimated between 0,000 years old[50]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aHands_in_Pettakere_Cave_DYK_crop.jpg)
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