A team of Australian and Indonesian archaeologists have published their finding of what could be the oldest cave painting in the world, found in Maros, on the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi. The finding was published on a scientific journal Nature on 8 October 2014.

In this recent discovery, the team has reported their investigation into the age of prehistoric arts across seven cave sites in Sulawesi. 12 prehistoric human hand stencils were reported in addition to another two figurative animal depictions of the babirusa or pig-deer.

“The earliest dated image from Maros, with a minimum age of 39.9 kyr (39,900 years old), is now the oldest known hand stencil in the world,” wrote the team of archeologists in the journal entitled Pleistocene cave art from Sulawesi, Indonesia.

In predicting the dates of these cave paintings, scientists have utilized a uranium-based carbon dating method.

“The earliest dated image from Maros, with a minimum age of 39.9 kyr, is now the oldest known hand stencil in the world,” the scientists wrote.

Before this recent discovery in Indonesia, prehistoric cave paintings were known to exist particularly in Europe.

Source: http://www.globalindonesianvoices.com/