In a depths of the Leang-Leang caves of Maros in Makassar, South Sulawesi, lies a 39,900 year-old cave art that looks like it has just been drawn yesterday. This is a cave art depicting hands on the wall.
The cave painting of hands is the oldest dated hand drawing and possibly oldest symbolic depiction in cave art. It is made by blowing homemade paint to the cave owners' hands, leaving a ghostly stencil.
The paintings show the different sizes of the hands of the people that lived in the cave. There are hands from children and adults. There are even hands with missing fingers. The artworks are left at the entrance of the caves, where the visitors can easily view them in broad daylight.Another painting is a 35,400-year old painting. It is a female pig-deer or as locals call it, a babirusa.
Maxime Aubert, archaeologist and research leader from Griffith University stated: "Overwhelmingly depicted in Europe and Sulawesi were large, and often dangerous, mammal species that possibly played major roles in the belief systems of these people."
Both paintings have been discovered five decades ago but their origin is still undetermined. This discovery possibly rewrites the history of art. The artworks extend the geography of ancient cave painters. Before the discovery, cave paintings were thought to have been first created around Prehistoric Europe era.
Iwan Sumantri, archaeologist from Hasanuddin University in Makassar told CNN, "The prehistoric caves are very important in the history of the cultural development of mankind, not only for the people who live in South Sulawesi but also for all humanity."
The art from the caves suggests the possibility that cave arts already existed before the travel of modern humans from Africa more than 600 centuries ago.
Chris Stringer, anthropologist from London's National History Museum told National Geographic, "I predict that even older examples of cave art will be discovered on Sulawesi, and in mainland Asia, and ultimately in our African homeland."
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