Prehistoric cave paintings of animals and human hands in Indonesia are as ancient as similar paintings found in Western Europe, according to a new study that suggests humans may have carried this art tradition with them when they migrated out of Africa.

"Until now, we've always believed that cave painting was part of a suite of complex symbolic behavior that humans invented in Europe," says archaeologist Alistair Pike of the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom. "This is actually showing that it's highly unlikely that the origin of painting caves was in Europe."

For decades, Indonesian researchers have known about rock art in limestone caves and rock shelters on an island called Sulawesi. The hand stencils and images of local animals, such as the "pig-deer," or babirusa, were assumed to be less than 10,000 years old, because scientists thought that the humid tropical environment would have destroyed anything older.

"The truth of it was, no one had really tried to date it," says Matt Tocheri of the Human Origins Program of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. "It's not easy to date rock art."

Now, though, in the journal Nature, a group of researchers from Indonesia and Australia, led by Maxime Aubert and Adam Brumm, have analyzed mineral deposits that formed on top of these paintings in seven caves.

Their analysis shows that one hand stencil is at least 39,900 years old and a painting of a babirusa is at least 35,400 years old.

Those ages are comparable to the age of a painted rhinoceros from the famous Chauvet Cave in France, which has been dated to 35,300 to 38,827 years ago. The oldest known cave painting is a red disk found on the wall of a Spanish cave that's at least 40,800 years old.

The fact that people in Indonesia were also painting cave walls way back then suggests "it is possible that rock art emerged independently at around the same time and at roughly both ends of the spatial distribution of early modern humans," the research team writes in Nature.

But another possibility is that this type of art is much older, though scientists haven't found evidence of it in the archaeological record.

"When something like this shows up almost instantaneously, all over the distribution of humans, within say 10,000 years, the odds are it's something from our ancestors," says John Shea of Stony Brook University in New York.

In Africa, our species goes back 200,000 years, Shea notes. But archaeological sites there tend to be found in shallow caves that are relatively exposed to wind and the hot, humid conditions — unlike the deep, cold caves in Europe that are ideal for preserving artwork.

"What we can find in older archaeological sites is evidence of symbolic behavior, such as the production of little beads and personal adornments, the production of mineral pigments — of red ochre and other kinds of colored pigments that people used, presumably, to decorate themselves — and traces of artistic embellishments on stone tools and on bone artifacts," says Shea.

Figurative artwork depicting animals has been found on stone slabs in a rock shelter known as Apollo 11 in Namibia, points out Alison Brooks of George Washington University, who says these images were made more than 30,000 years ago.

"What this suggests is that this whole ability to make these things and possibly the tradition of making them is part of the cultural repertoire of the people who left Africa," says Brooks. She says that the paintings in Indonesia are very similar to images seen in Europe — for example, the babirusa in profile, with hair, is similar to European depictions of hairy mammoths.

But the Indonesian animals have stick legs and feet, instead of more detailed limbs. And there's a hint of a red line that might depict the ground surface of the land that the animal is standing on, which is not found in other places.

"There are some things that are a little bit different about this," says Brooks, though "it does seem to be that it's part of the tradition."

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Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

Cave paintings have a way of capturing the imagination. Seeing a prehistoric image of a horse or mammoth on a cave wall allows us to emotionally connect to the people who made those paintings tens of thousands of years ago. NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reports that a new discovery about cave art in Indonesia is now challenging scientists' long-held ideas about the first cave artists.

NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: The most famous painted caves are in Europe, but for decades researchers have also known about artwork on the walls of limestone caves and rock shelters on an Indonesian island called Sulawesi.

MATT TOCHERI: Some of these pieces are hand stencils so basically they've outlined the shape of their hands on the cave wall.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Matt Tocheri is with the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. He says other cave paintings there show local animals, like the babirusa...

TOCHERI: Which is a very interesting pig that is only found on Sulawesi.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: The animals are shown in profile. The artist drew little lines with red pigment to show the hair on their fat bodies. The artwork generally isn't well-preserved. Researchers thought these paintings must be relatively recent because the tropical environment would degrade things quickly. They figured these paintings had to be less than 10,000 years old.

TOCHERI: The truth of it was no one had really tried to date it. It's not easy to date rock art.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: A group of Indonesian and Australian researchers has now done a new analysis. They looked at mineral deposits that formed on top of the artwork. These mineral deposits look like tiny little cauliflowers. They're sometimes called cave popcorn.

Alistair Pike, at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, has studied the age of European cave paintings using the same method.

ALISTAIR PIKE: We're dating things formed on top of the paintings rather than the pigments of the paintings themselves.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: He says what was found in the Indonesian caves was surprising. One hand stencil is more than 39,000 years old. One painting of that pig-like animal is more than 35,000 years old. In the journal Nature, the research team reports on art from seven cave sites. They say it's all about the same age as the earliest cave paintings in Europe. And Pike says this is a huge deal.

PIKE: Because up until now, we've always believed that cave painting was part of a suite of complex symbolic behavior that humans invented in Europe.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: It's possible that cave painting developed independently in both Europe and Indonesia at the same time, but Pike thinks it's likely that the origin was earlier and somewhere else.

PIKE: And then individuals moved east to (unintelligible) to Europe, taking the tradition of painting caves with them.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Cave painting traditions might actually stretch way, way back. John Shea is an archaeologist at Stony Brook University in New York.

JOHN SHEA: I think it's probably the case that the very first humans - the first people who looked like us, lived 200,000 years ago - had these abilities.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: He says these people lived in Africa, but unlike Europe which has deep, cold caves that are excellent for preserving artwork...

SHEA: Africa's hot and wet and the caves tend to be fairly shallow and the surfaces of the caves tended to decompose fairly rapidly.

GREENFIELDBOYCE: Shea points to one site in southern Africa where archaeologists found 30,000-year-old images of animals drawn on rock slabs. And even more ancient sites in Africa showed that people were making beads and using colored pigments, presumably to decorate themselves, if not the walls of their home.

Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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