A contour drawing of a human hand found in the Liang Metanduno limestone cave on the small island of Muna in Indonesia is likely the world’s “oldest” drawing.
According to scientists, it was created at least 67,800 years ago.
The drawing is a reddish-colored stencil of a hand (the fingertips are clearly pointed), which has faded considerably over time and is now difficult to distinguish from the cave wall, the BBC writes.
Such images were created as follows: the hand was pressed tightly against the wall, and pigment was sprinkled onto it.
The age of the image was determined by analyzing uranium in the mineral layers that had accumulated on the cave wall over time.
“67,800 years. This is about 100 years older than the oldest known hand drawing, which was found in Spain and attributed to Neanderthals,” the scientists believe.
According to the researchers, the people who created this drawing belonged to a population that migrated from the Asian mainland to the Indonesian islands and, later, probably continued their journey to Australia.
This find also supports the view that the Homo sapiens species reached the vast territories of Australia and New Guinea about 15,000 years earlier than some researchers assume.
The study’s results and a description of the findings were published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature.
“This ancient hand drawing is unique because it belongs to a style characteristic exclusively of Sulawesi. The tips of the fingers are very finely pointed,” says one of the leaders of the study, Australian archaeologist Maxime Obert.
