Prehistoric humans have been making distinctive hand shapes in caves in Sulawesi for tens of thousands of years. Pictured here is an undated example from Leang Jarie, Maros, Sulawesi. The hand stencil detailed in the new study was left on a different cave wall and made at least 67,800 years ago.
“They’re made with ochre. They put their hand there, and then they sprayed pigment. We can’t tell which technique they used. They could have put pigment in their mouth and sprayed it. They could have used some sort of instrument,” said Maxime Aubert, an archaeologist and geochemist from Griffith University in Australia. Aubert, who was the senior author of a study on the findings that published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, described the discovery as “thrilling and humbling.”
Prehistoric Picassos
A stencilled outline of a hand found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi
is the worlds oldest known cave painting claw-like motif 67,800 years old
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