World's Oldest Known Figurative Artwork Discovered in a Cave in Indonesia, Depicts a Warty Pig
Researchers have found cave art in Sulawesi, Indonesia which has raised questions about their assumptions about cave illustrations. This particular cave art has for its subject, a warty pig, observing a social interaction amongst others of their kind, CNN reported.
According to the archeologists involved in its discovery, the illustration dates back around 45,500 years. This finding showcases that the past assertion held by researchers about figurative cave paintings originating from Europe could be wrong.
In 2017, researchers discovered the art of the pig on the walls of the Leang Tedongnge cave, Smithsonian Magazine reported. Four years later, experts were able to date the painting back to 45,500 years, making it the oldest example of figurative cave art in the world. Figurative cave art is the term used for cave paintings that feature subjects from the real world, rather than abstract concepts.
A study published in Science Advances claims there could be more such cave paintings from similar timeframes in the area. Archeologists in recent times have been scouring the limestone karst caves in Sulawesi and have found numerous specimens of prehistoric art. The illustrations range from handprint stencils to animal drawings. The drawings are a great way for experts to get a glimpse of life in the prehistoric world.
The pig found on the walls of Leang Tedongnge was purplish, Smithsonian Magazine reported. The figure is not fully complete and adorns the cave’s back wall. The painting also has other incomplete pig figures in various states of decay.
Experts believe that the main warty pig is witnessing a confrontation or mating. "The arrangement of the figures is suggestive, in our view, of a narrative composition or scene in the modern Western sense," researchers claimed.
The pig painting was made by pulverizing ochre into a powder and then mixing it with water. This method made the process of dating difficult. Researchers in the study applied a technique called 'cave popcorn' to date the mineral deposits accumulated over the painting.
In this method, experts collected calcite crusts deposited over the illustration through the years and then took out the uranium within it for analysis. This analysis gave them the minimum age of the painting because minerals take some time to form in a cave illustration. Therefore the painting's actual age could be even more. This method has been an issue of debate amongst experts for years.
Some researchers have pointed out that various natural phenomena could artificially increase the age of uranium in the calcite crusts and give wrong results from 'cave popcorn'. Paul Pettitt, an archaeologist at Durham University (U.K.), is one of the experts against this dating method and is appealing to researchers to analyze more before coming to conclusions.
Pettitt claims that the method is not enough to rule out that Indonesian cave paintings are older than European cave paintings. "We do need to see a little less hyperbole and a little more rigor before we start rewriting prehistory," he said.
Warty pigs seem to be very popular subjects for illustrators in the area, Smithsonian Magazine reported. Eighty percent of the known animal art representations in South Sulawesi feature this particular animal.
"These are small native pigs that are endemic to Sulawesi and are still found on the island, although in ever-dwindling numbers," said Adam Brumm, an archeologist at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. "The common portrayal of these warty pigs in the ice age rock art also offers hints at the deep symbolic significance and perhaps spiritual value of Sulawesi warty pigs in the ancient hunting culture," he added.