I thought the cave art dates were way older, then I saw the number 51,200 and had to sit down

Sam Rodriguez · 2026-09-19T22:55:03.944181+00:00

I always figured the paintings in Sulawesi were maybe 20,000 years old at most, just sort of a rough guess I never bothered to check. Then a researcher on a podcast said a pig painting in that cave has been dated to 51,200 years, which makes it the oldest known figurative art anywhere, and I had to rewind it twice. What got me was the hand stencils nearby, those are at least 39,900 years old, so people were doing this stuff in Indonesia before anyone was doing it in Europe. Anyone know if the dating method they used on that pig is the same one used on the Spanish cave art?

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I thought the cave art dates were way older, then I saw the number 51,200 and had to sit down | Archaeology Discoveries - Vivisector