History

For decades, the consensus in prehistoric art held that figurative painting began in western Europe: Chauvet (c. 36,000 BP), Altamira and Lascaux (c. 17,000–35,000 BP) were the canonical reference points. This Eurocentric view was fundamentally challenged by fieldwork in the Maros-Pangkep caves of Sulawesi. In 2014, Aubert and colleagues published uranium-series dates for hand stencils at nearby Leang Timpuseng establishing a minimum age of 39,900 years — immediately comparable to the oldest European examples. The 2021 publication of Leang Tedongnge data moved the horizon back further: 45,500 years for the warty pig, the oldest confirmed figurative image in the world. Since comprehensive dating of the Maros-Pangkep complex continues, the actual oldest image may be older still.

The people who made this painting had reached Sulawesi by island-hopping from Southeast Asia during glacial periods when sea levels were lower. Their art — pigs, dwarf buffalo (anoa), hand stencils — and at nearby Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4 a narrative hunting scene with therianthropes (half-human, half-animal figures) dated to at least 43,900 years — demonstrates that figurative representation, narrative composition, and conceptual blending were already fully formed cognitive capacities tens of thousands of years before the same skills appeared in Europe. The cave was unknown to outsiders until 2011, when local informants led researchers to the canyon. The path through the gorge is only passable at low tide for part of the year.

The calcite crusts that had grown over portions of the painting were precisely what made scientific dating possible. Researchers drilled tiny samples of calcium carbonate from the crust, measured the ratio of uranium-238 to its daughter isotope thorium-230, and calculated the minimum elapsed time since the calcite began forming over the pigment. The underlying figure must be at least 45,500 years old; it may be older still if time passed before calcite began to accumulate.