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Hot take: a 40,000 year old cave painting in Indonesia is older than the famous French ones, and I had no clue
I was reading up on the Leang Tedongnge cave in Sulawesi out of boredom on a Sunday and learned the painting there of a wild pig is dated to at least 45,500 years old. That number stopped me cold. I always thought Lascaux in France was the big one, but those paintings are only around 17,000 years old, so this is close to three times as old. The dating came from tiny mineral layers that built up over the pigment, which is a clever trick I did not know about. It makes me wonder how much older art is sitting in caves nobody has tested yet. Has anyone here followed the dating work coming out of Sulawesi the last few years?
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dylan4633d ago
Is a pig sketch really "art" in the same sense as Lascaux though, or could it just be some bored hunter doodling? Dating methods on mineral layers can also get messy, so maybe hold off on crowning it the world's oldest masterpiece.
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