World's oldest cave art, a 67,800-year-old hand stencil, found in Indonesia

Archaeologists have identified the world's oldest known cave art on Muna Island in Indonesia's South Sulawesi province—a hand stencil created at least 67,800 years ago. The discovery, detailed in a study published in the journal Nature, significantly predates the previous record-holder, a 51,200-year-old pig painting found nearby in 2024, redefining the origins of human symbolic creativity.

Discovery and Dating of the Ancient Artwork

The faded hand stencil was found in Liang Metanduno cave among dozens of other rock art examples across Muna and neighboring Buton Island. Despite its "poor state of preservation," the artwork clearly shows "a portion of the fingers and the adjoining palm area." Advanced dating techniques applied to mineral deposits confirm its minimum age of 67,800 years, placing its creation deep in the Pleistocene epoch by early modern humans or possibly other hominin species.

Unique Artistic Features and Research Context

Lead researcher Adhi Agus Oktaviana of Indonesia's National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), who has studied the island's caves since 2015, noted a distinctive feature: the tip of one finger appears artificially narrowed, either by added pigment or hand movement during application. This style is unique to Sulawesi's cave art. The ancient stencil was partially concealed beneath newer paintings depicting a person riding a horse with a chicken, indicating the site was used for artistic expression across millennia.

Implications for Human History and Migration

This find has profound implications for understanding human cognitive development and migration. It suggests that the capacity for complex symbolic expression, a hallmark of modern human behavior, was present in Southeast Asia tens of thousands of years earlier than previously documented. It also reinforces Indonesia's status as a global hotspot for prehistoric archaeology, offering crucial evidence about the cultural lives of early human populations as they spread across Eurasia.