A painting thought to be the earliest example of storytelling in art is seen in a cave on Indonesia's Sulawesi island. It seems to depict three human-like figures and a pig. Among the hundreds of caves hidden in the limestone karsts of Indonesia’s Sulawesi island, a work of art faded into a rock wall could be of global importance. A depiction of three humanoid figures and a pig, the painting is the oldest known scene created by humans, dated to at least 51,200 years ago, scientists say.
It was evidence that humans were capable of storytelling in the distant past, said Adam Brumm, a professor of archaeology at Griffith University’s Australian Research Center for Human Evolution and an author of the study, which was published in Nature on Thursday. “Storytelling is a hugely important part of human evolution, and possibly even it helps to explain our success as a species,” he said in a briefing about the research.“We don’t know exactly what’s going on in this scene,” he added of the cave painting. “But it’s clearly communicating some sort of story that involves the interaction between these three humanlike figures and the pig.”
The Sulawesi residents of 50,000 B.C. or so were “besotted” with painting pigs, depicting them over and over again in cave art there, Brumm said. Archaeological evidence suggests they hunted the species, called the Celebes warty pig. The cave’s elevated position, which would not have been convenient for everyday life, could suggest they went there specifically to paint or to paint as part of some other special practice, he added.
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