The Oldest Figurative Art in the World Discovered in Indonesia
Rock art from Indonesia is 51200 years old
Rock art is a fascinating enigma; it exists almost everywhere and was made hundreds if not thousands of years ago. It is a testament to peoples and cultures we sometimes know nothing else about except what they chose to paint.
Some drawings are simple dots and geographic symbols; others depict animals and people easily recognizable to the modern eye. There is also a mysterious amalgamation of the two, a puzzle that continues to pique the curiosity of researchers and enthusiasts.
The oldest art (abstract) was found at Blombos Cave, South Africa. It is a 77,000-year-old piece of engraved, cross-hatched ochre. We have a hologram model of the piece at the museum, where I occasionally give tours. It’s tiny, roughly the length of a finger; in images, it always seemed so much larger.
The discovery of this small ochre piece was groundbreaking; it provided a time frame for ancient humans to think more like modern humans, using abstract thought and symbolism to create images. These could evolve into expressions of culture and, eventually, of self through objects.
The oldest figurative art (made of discernible figures, animals, and objects) is dated from Indonesia on the island of Sulawesi. The fact that the oldest figurative art is from Sulawesi is known; what is unknown is just how old some of these images are.
Recently, archaeologist Adhi Agus Oktaviana and colleagues from Griffith University have used a different technique to re-date some of these paintings. Their results pushed back the minimum age by thousands of years, displaced the previous holder of the oldest figurative art, and gave that title to another set of rock paintings.
The now oldest figurative cave art is a jaw-dropping 51,200 years old.
The Dating Technique
Until recently, the oldest art was considered an image of a Sulawesi warty pig at Leang Tedongnge (minimum age, 45.5 thousand years ago). However, using a different dating technique, new dates could be determined.
After rock art has been painted, a layer of calcium carbonate deposits often forms over and around it. These layers are dated to determine when they formed, and the information is used to extrapolate when the rock art was painted.
Using the solution-based U-series methods, in which parts of these layers are removed, chemically treated, prepared in the lab, and then dated. This method is not just slow but destructive. It also comes with the drawback that not all calcium carbonate layers form simply uniformly; some form coralloid speleotherms (mineral formations), also known as ‘cave popcorn,’ which are relatively common in Indonesian rock art caves. These complex clusters are much trickier to date.
However, the results can be analyzed on the spot without needing removal using laser-ablation U-series (LA-U-series), in which a laser scans the calcium carbonate deposits. The results are faster, less destructive, and cost-efficient, providing more detailed information about the deposit’s composition and age.
The Art Re-dated
Sadly, the art from Leang Tedongnge (the previously oldest art) could not be re-dated, as the deposits needed to date it had been completely removed during the last dating using the old solution-based technique. However, art from two other sites could be redated. One site was Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4. Originally dated to around 43,900 years ago, the new date reveals it to be around 50.2 ± 2.2 thousand years old.
The 4.5m wide panel depicts human-like figures interacting with Sulawesi warty pigs and dwarf bovids. Some humans appear to carry ropes and spears, and some may have animal characteristics, making them therianthropes. Traditionally, the imagery is tentatively suggested to depict a hunting scene.
But more on the interpretation later.
The second set of rock art images re-dated were from Leang Karapuang. Discovered on the ceiling of a limestone cave in 2017, the images depict a large red suid (pig family) and three human figures.
Sadly, much of the art has been destroyed due to extensive exfoliation of the rock surface. The human figures are congregated near the animal's head. One carries a stick or object. Another, painted just at the pig’s mouth, is facing away, arms outstretched. Finally, the third, just above the pig’s head, is painted almost upside down, one arm outstretched, seemingly touching the pig’s head.
Dating the images revealed them to be at least 51,200 years old (53.5 ± 2.3 ka).
The Meaning and Myth of the Pigs
While the dating techniques can elucidate when the images were first made, they cannot tell us why or even where the tradition of figurative art originated.
It is possible figurative art traditions were first developed in Africa and subsequently spread with the dispersal of Homo sapiens to other parts of the world, including Indonesia, but that these older traditions have not been found or that the tradition developed after the spread out of Africa, and could have been developed somewhere in Southeast Asia were the current oldest traditions exist.
But what do they mean?
For southern African San rock art, we are lucky to have ethnographic accounts of the people who made it; we know their language and culture and even have some re-tellings of artists explaining what rock art means.
And yet, even then, we can only tentatively suggest what most rock art depictions could hint at trance (altered state of mind) experiences, shamans in the spirit world, making rain, healing, and communicating with the spirits of the dead. But for Sulawesi, we don’t have these ethnographic accounts; we do have contemporary myths and beliefs about boars. However, these are like playing a game of broken telephones over 50 thousand years in the making.
In one mythological story, the god Batara Guru sends an emissary, Kula Gumarang, to collect three magical objects from Earth. However, he becomes distracted and infatuated with the lovely Dewi Shri. A loyal wife, she rejects his advances and turns him into a boar (babi rusa), making him a target for the peasants to hunt. Still harassing Dewi Shri, she asks to be made intangible but that her life-essence remain on earth; this happens, and her essence is reformed in the form of new rice plants. These rice plants, however, are pestered by Kula Gumarang. Displeased, Batara Guru kills him, fragmenting his evil spirit, which is said to be the reason why rice crops succumb to plague and disease.
However, the rock paintings of Indonesia predate farming and rice cultivation. Perhaps other boar myths and beliefs could shed answers.
In pre-Islamic Java, an Island of Indonesia, the boar/pig often symbolized religious figures or ascetics. They were usually depicted living peacefully near hermitages and represented solitary ascetics who sustained themselves on tubers and what they found in their surroundings, like warty pigs in the forest.
In another myth, Babi ngepet are demon boars, people who use black magic to become rich instantly. In turn, they had to sacrifice their humanity by being transformed into or possessed by demon pigs for some time.
Were the boar images, perhaps shamanic figures, represented as boars?
Some aspects speak both for and against this; on the one hand, therianthropes (human-animal hybrids), like in San rock art, could have been the result of an altered state of mind experience (these experiences are universal owing to the identical nervous system all humans have, feeling extra limbs, seeing bright rope-like tendrils, feeling weightless. However, their interpretations are different). Perhaps the depicted therianthropes are shamans possessed by boars, but to what end, evil and possessed or good and well-meaning shamans?
On the other hand, Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4 has also been tentatively suggested as depicting a hunting scene (spiritual or otherwise), owing to the spears and ropes and the general composition of the images, such as Ther 1 (Therianthrope 1), who appears to have a rope.
For the latter interpretation, boar fights were a common pastime in pre-Islamic Java. Boar fights symbolized martial prowess and virility, and elite warriors’ combat skills were often described in comparison with how boars fought. Perhaps the boars in these images were also linked to fighting or hunting prowess, and the human figures near them represent individuals harnessing that same prowess.
Of course, it is always possible that they were not symbolic but simply depictions of everyday life, hunting, gathering, etc. If so, I wonder what the individuals at Leang Karapuang were thinking, prancing around a boar and touching it; wild boars are incredibly dangerous (Robert Baratheon died by being ripped open by a boar for a reason).
Sadly, without a time machine, the true purpose and meaning behind these images will forever remain speculation.
Researchers have pushed back the known date for the oldest figurative art in the world. These images imply a long and early history of Homo sapiens’s culture of storytelling and record-keeping in the form of imagery.
Though these stories may be lost to us now, the artistic medium in which they were first recorded remains, and thousands of years later, researchers can tell you when they were made.
The researchers only re-dated two rock art sites; perhaps among the rich collection of Indonesian rock art, there are even older examples waiting to be re-dated or discovered, pushing back when humans began to think symbolically even further. When we begin to think, the way we do is an essential aspect of understanding the evolution of the modern human brain and the development of human culture.
If you had to try to interpret these images, what do you think they could depict? If you know local rock art traditions from your nook of the world, what similarities do the Indonesian traditions have with yours, if any?
Let me know your thoughts, and if you’d like to support me further, why not Buy Me A Coffee?
References
- Hoogervorst, T. and Jiří Jákl (2024). Fearsome Game, Popular Meat, Symbolic Wealth: Human-Pig Relations in Pre-Islamic Java. Society & Animals, pp.1–19. doi:https://doi.org/10.1163/15685306-bja10197.
- Oktaviana, A.A., Joannes-Boyau, R., Hakim, B., Burhan, B., Sardi, R., Adhityatama, S., Sumantri, I., Tang, M., Lebe, R., Ilyas, I. and Abbas, A., 2024. Narrative cave art in Indonesia by 51,200 years ago. Nature, pp.1–5.
- Van der Kroef, J.M., 1952. Rice legends of Indonesia. The Journal of American Folklore, 65(255), pp.49–55.
- Wikipedia. (2023). Babi ngepet. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_ngepet [Accessed 5 Jul. 2024].
