The limestone caves of eastern Kalimantan on the Indonesian island of Borneo have preserved thousands of rock carvings of animals, people, abstract symbols and handprints (such images of hands are called "stencil"). Their study has been conducted since the 90s of the XX century, but now scientists have applied ultra-modern dating methods, and this has allowed to revise the history of ancient art, reports the Daily Mail.
It turned out that a red bull, applied to the wall of an Indonesian cave with iron oxide or ocher, is 40,000 to 52,000 years old. Until now, the oldest prehistoric drawings of animals were considered the images in the Spanish cave El Castillo, created about 35.6 thousand years ago. Thus, the red bull becomes the oldest example of figurative painting and refutes the well-established version that rock art appeared in Europe. An equally ancient example of figurativeism, like the bull, is the so-called Man-Lev from Germany, although this is a sculpture, not a drawing.
The new discovery makes us look at the history of the development of fine art from a different angle. Scientists note that serious changes in the culture of rock paintings in Asia took place about 20-21 thousand years ago: artists begin to include other people in their works. In drawings from 13.6 to 20 thousand years old, you can see scenes of dancing, hunting, rituals, and the characters are holding spears or have magnificent headdresses. Even stencil painting has become richer: rings and patterns (probably tattoos) appear on the hands, and dark colors are added to the red color.
However, there are still many unresolved issues. During the Upper Paleolithic and Late Ice Age, Borneo was not an island, but part of continental Asia. The first people arrived here between 60,000 and 70,000 years ago, but drawings from those years have not survived. On the contrary, in Europe, art appears simultaneously with the appearance of modern man there. Scientists do not exclude that the dating of the arrival of the first people in Asia is erroneous, but only on the basis of some drawings, which turned out to be older than European ones, it is impossible to talk about this. It is also possible that the most ancient drawings have not yet been found, or they are known to science, but their time frame is set incorrectly.
Anastasia Barinova
