Panel from Borneo cave,
handprints at top right,
banteng at lower left.
www.livescience.com.
As more and
more discoveries are made around the world it becomes increasingly obvious that
the only thing special about the cave art in Europe is that it has been studied
much more than elsewhere. Increasing attention to rock art in other parts of
the world are now challenging all previous assumptions about who, what, and
where was first. In other words our cultural-centric biases are showing.
"A 40,000-year-old painting of
a mysterious, wild cow-like beast discovered in a Borneo cave is the oldest
human-made drawing of an animal on record. The discovery indicates that
figurative cave art - one of the most significant innovations in human culture
- didn't begin in Europe as many scientists thought, but rather in Southeast
Asia during the last ice age."
(Geggel 2018)
"Previously, the oldest known
animal painting in the world was an approximately 35,400-year-old babirusa, or
"pig-deer," on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi." (Geggel 2018)
Banteng on panel from Borneo cave,www.livescience.com.
"A limestone cave in eastern
Borneo features a reddish-orange painting of a horned animal, possibly a type
of wild cattle that may have been found on the island at the time. The painting
dates to at least 40,000 years ago, concludes a team led by archaeologist
Maxime Aubert of Griffith University in Southport, Australia. This creature
represents the oldest known example of a painted figure anywhere in the world
the scientists report online November 7 in Nature." (Bower 2018)
Male banteng,.
http://zoochat.com,
public domain.
A species
of wild cow known as the banteng (Bos javanicus) still lives in the forests of
Borneo and this image might represent the banteng, or an unknown prehistoric
relative. In the banteng the horns are considerably larger on the male, as seen
in this cave painting.
"The same cave walls contain two
hand outlines framed in reddish orange pigment that were made at least 37,200
years ago, and a similar hand stencil with a maximum age of 51,800 years. Age
estimates rest on analyses of uranium in mineral deposits that had formed over
and underneath parts of each cave painting. Scientists used known decay rates
of radioactive uranium in these deposits to calculate maximum and minimum dates
for the paintings."
(Bower 2018)
"The researchers collected
calcium-carbonate samples from the Kalimantan cave drawings so they could do
uranium-series dating - a technique made possible by radioactive decay. When
rainwater seeps through limestone, it dissolves a small amount of uranium,
Aubert told Live Science. As uranium decays, it turns into the element thorium.
By studying the ratio of uranium to thorium in the calcium carbonate that is
coating the cave art, researchers determined how old the initial coating was,
he said."
(Geggel 2018)
This is a
good hard dating for these images, something not always available for rock art.
Handprints from Borneo cave,
red-orange are earlier, the
darker ones are later.
www.sciencenews.org.
"The team proposed that the
prehistoric artworks can be divided into at least two chronologically distinct
phases of art production. The first phase is characterized by hand stencils and
large figurative paintings of animals that are reddish-orange in colour." (Brumm 2018)
"Hand stencils also
characterize the later phase, but these stencils (and associated images) tend
to be dark purple ("mulberry") in colour." (Brumm 2018)
The
recently dated images from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, and now these
even earlier dates, should put to rest our old assumptions of cultural
imperialism. Just because the rock art in Europe was found first, and studied
the most extensively, does not mean that the Paleolithic Europeans were
culturally more advanced. Indeed, with these new dates from the other side of
the world it looks like we have some catching up to do.
NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet
with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not
intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture
credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on
these reports you should read the originals at the sites listed below.
REFERENCES:
Bower,
Bruce,
2018 Like
Europe, Borneo Hosted Stone Age Cave Artists, November 7, 2018,
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/oldest-known-drawing-figure-found-cave-art-borneo
Brumm,
Adam,
2018 Borneo
Cave Discovery: Is the World's Oldest Rock Art in Southeast Asia?, November
8, 2018,
https://www.viw.com.au/index.pho/news/16298-borneo-cave-discovery-is-the-world-s-oldest-rock-art-in-southeast-asia
Geggel,
Laura,
2018 World's
Oldest Animal Drawing, Discovered in Borneo Cave, Is a Weird Cow Beast, November 7, 2018,
https://www.livescience.com/64034- oldest-figurative-cave-art.html
http://photos.zoochat.com
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