These hand paintings are tens of thousands of years old.Image: keystone
Prehistoric and mysterious: According to researchers, a handprint in a limestone cave in Indonesia is the oldest known cave art piece in the world.
01/22/2026, 06:4501/22/2026, 07:56
The fragment of a 14 by 10 centimeter hand stencil was dated to be at least around 67,800 years old, surpassing a previous record find from Sulawesi from 2024 by more than 15,000 years.
Hand stencils – also called hand negatives – are a form of representation in which a hand is placed on the rock face and paint – such as red ocher – is blown or sprayed over it. The hand print can then be seen as a light silhouette. The discovery provides new evidence about the early spread of modern humans and the settlement of Australia, it said.
The artwork is located in a cave on Muna Island, a side island of Sulawesi in southeastern Indonesia. Sulawesi is popular with tourists from all over the world because of its volcanoes, coral reefs and diving spots.
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The cave art was discovered and examined by an international team of experts led by scientists from Australia’s Griffith University, the Indonesian research agency BRIN and Southern Cross University in Australia. The results were published in the scientific journal “Nature”.
The researchers used a dating method in which the age is determined based on radioactive decay processes in deposits. Microscopically small mineral deposits that had formed above and partly below the paint layers were analyzed. This made it possible to narrow down the period in which the work of art was created.
The scientists also report that the cave was used for artistic purposes over an exceptionally long period of time. Accordingly, paintings were created there repeatedly over at least 35,000 years – until around 20,000 years ago. The hand negative found is surrounded by much younger depictions.
The results made it clear “that Sulawesi was home to one of the richest and longest-lasting artistic cultures in the world, with origins in the earliest history of human settlement on the island at least 67,800 years ago,” said archaeologist and geochemist Maxime Aubert from Griffith University.
Fingers were subsequently narrowed
According to the team’s observations, the hand negative also has a special feature: the hand that was originally sprayed was subsequently changed by deliberately narrowing the negative outline of the fingers. This creates the impression of a claw-like hand. The symbolic content of this change is unclear, the researchers explain – but it could be a sign that people and animals were closely linked to one another back then.
According to the research team, the finds have far-reaching significance for understanding the early history of Australia’s Aborigines. “It is very likely that the people who created these images in Sulawesi were part of the larger population that later spread throughout the region and eventually reached Australia,” said BRIN scientist Adhi Agus Oktaviana.
Australia was probably settled 65,000 years ago
Experts have long been discussing when the ancient large continent of Sahul – today’s Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea – was first settled by humans. While some models assume an arrival around 50,000 years ago, others say at least 65,000 years ago. “The discovery strongly supports the assumption that the ancestors of the first Australians were in Sahul 65,000 years ago,” said Oktaviana.
The dating is considered to be the oldest direct evidence to date of modern humans along a northern migration route from Asia via Sulawesi and the Moluccas to Sahul. “By dating this extremely ancient cave art in Sulawesi, we now have the oldest direct evidence of the presence of modern humans along this northern migration corridor,” said geoarchaeologist Renaud Joannes-Boyau of Southern Cross University. (sda/dpa)