Pig painting may be world oldest cave art: archaeologists

Pig painting may be world oldest cave art: archaeologists

Subject: Art and Culture

Context: Archaeologists of the Griffith university have discovered the world’s oldest known cave art — a life-sized picture of a wild pig that was painted at least 45,500 years ago in Indonesia

Concept:

• It was found in South Sulawesi and consists of a figurative depiction of a warty pig, a wild boar that is endemic to this Indonesian island.
• It was found in limestone cave of LeangTedongnge and is now the earliest known representational work of art in the world.
• It shows a pig with a short crest of upright hairs and a pair of horn-like facial warts in front of the eyes, a characteristic feature of adult male Sulawesi warty pigs.
• These pigs were the most commonly portrayed animal in the ice age rock art of the island, suggesting they have long been valued both as food and a focus of creative thinking and artistic expression
• Archaeologists claim that isolated Bugis community living in this hidden valley have never been visited by Western countries even during colonial times.
• The team sampled the art for Uranium-series dating, a technique to determine the age of calcium carbonate materials.