Archaeologists in Indonesia have stumbled upon an extraordinarily old cave painting which appears to depict human-like figures in pursuit of wild pigs and buffaloes. It’s quite possibly the oldest portrayal of a hunting scene in the archaeological record, but the vague nature of the artwork leaves it open to interpretation.
New research published today in Nature describes the discovery of an approximately 43,900-year-old cave painting found at the Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4 site in South Sulawesi, Indonesia.
“These images represent some of the oldest storytelling anywhere in the world and contain elements that have never been seen together—a hunting scene depicting hunting strategies combined with the use of therianthropes,” Kira Westaway, an associate professor from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Macquarie University in Australia, told Gizmodo.
“This is not just a simple representation of themselves, such as a hand stencil, but a complex representation of their existence and potentially their beliefs—to find this at this early age is astonishing,” said Westaway, who wasn’t involved with the new research.