These Tiny 20,000-Year-Old Artworks From Indonesia Prove That Europe Wasn’t the Only Place Art Was Being Made During the Last Ice Age

Archaeologists working in
Indonesia have discovered two 20,000-year-old engravings of a water
buffalo and a celestial orb—the first of their kind ever to be
found outside Europe.

In the Leang Bulu Bettue cave on
the island of Sulawesi, researchers unearthed a pair of miniature
portable stones—or plaquettes, as they’re called—engraved with
figurative drawings. The findings were published last week in the
academic journal Nature Human
Behaviour.

One engraving, carved into
flowstone, depicts an anoa, a small water buffalo native to
Sulawesi. The second depicts a celestial orb emitting rays of
light, and is carved into a piece of limestone. Researchers say the stone
orb amounts to the first form of pre-historic sculptural relief
found in Asia—evidence that contradicts the long-held belief that
people in what is now Western Europe were the first to express
themselves through art.  

“With more discoveries going on
over this side of the world, we’re finding that’s definitely not
the case,” Michelle Langley, who authored the study, told
Cosmos. “People were doing it over here at the same
time or earlier. We just hadn’t been looking.”

“We hope that people are able to
appreciate and celebrate the similarities and diversities of our
first cultures and communities the world over,” she added. “People
20,000 years ago were doing some pretty interesting and amazing
things in Africa, in Europe, in Asia, and in Australia. We are only
just scratching the surface of the complexity of people living back
then.”

The anoa stone was eroded to the
point of near indecipherability. What at first seemed to be a
pattern of intersecting lines carved into the rock were eventually
identified as a classic template of the anoa, with its head turned
toward its back. 

“At first I thought I might be seeing things, though I became
more convinced the more I looked,” Langley told Atlas Obscura. “We were pretty excited about
the identification of an engraved animal—we knew it was a
first.”

Though Langley analyzed the
plaquettes, they were first uncovered in a 2017 dig led by
archaeologist Adam Brumm from Griffith University in Brisbane,
Australia. Brumm’s team found the stones in a pile of ancient
garbage alongside other artifacts including tools, animal bones,
and beads—all indications that the site was of frequent use for
hunter-gatherers during the last ice age. 

In 2014, Brumm’s group, with
whom Langley works, also discovered a series of ancient animal
paintings in another Sulawesi cave. And last year, they uncovered
similar illustrations on the island of Borneo. Carbon dating found
both sets of paintings to be over 40,000 years old, making them the
oldest pictures in the world.

The post These Tiny 20,000-Year-Old Artworks From Indonesia
Prove That Europe Wasn’t the Only Place Art Was Being Made During
the Last Ice Age appeared first on artnet News.