Dating back at least 44,000 years, the Indonesian images depict half-human, half-animal figures and are older than any cave art found in Europe.
A discovery in a remote Indonesian cave has rewritten the history book on human thought and spirituality.
One of the team's leaders, Adam Brumm from Griffith’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, said the painting was also noteworthy as the earliest known depiction of half-human, half-animal figures."Generally they have human-like bodies with arms and legs but some of their heads appear to be the heads of birds, or one is possibly a flying fox. One of them has a tail, which is usually a dead giveaway," Professor Brumm said.
Their depiction in an Indonesian cave so long ago is important because it demonstrates that the artists were thinking beyond what they could see around them and imagining things that did not exist, which is the foundation of stories, culture and spirituality. "It’s been considered quite important because up until now, it was considered an indicator of where the first religions, or certainly religious thought, might have evolved."
"We don’t date the pigment itself because there’s nothing in it that will give us a date, but fortunately, they are limestone caves and sometimes a bit of calcium carbonate falls on top of the cave paintings," Professor Aubert said.
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