A hunting scene painted at least 50,000 years ago
Sulawesi's cave art rewrites where and when picture-making began
Quick facts
- Site
- Leang Bulu' Sipong 4, Sulawesi, Indonesia
- Current dating
- At least 50,200 years old (2024 study)
- Superseded estimate
- 43,900 years (2019 study, same panel)
- Depicted
- A hunt: pigs and anoas pursued by human-animal hybrid (therianthrope) figures
What happened
In a cave called Leang Bulu' Sipong 4 on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia, researchers found a large painted panel depicting a narrative hunting scene: wild pigs and small buffalo-like animals called anoas pursued by human-like figures carrying spears and ropes, several of which show non-human features. A 2024 study published in Nature, using a more precise uranium-series imaging technique, dated the scene to a minimum of 50,200 years, revising an earlier 2019 estimate of 43,900 years upward by more than 4,000 years. The researchers interpret the hybrid figures as therianthropes, composite human-animal beings, rather than straightforward portraits of hunters.
Why it matters
This is among the oldest known examples of narrative art anywhere in the world, older than Europe's famous painted caves, and the 2024 redating shows how actively this field of research is still being revised: the same panel got four thousand years older within five years, using a better dating method on the same paint. The therianthrope figures also suggest the artists could imagine beings that do not exist, a capacity researchers connect to early symbolic and possibly religious thought.
How we know
The 2024 study, published in Nature and hosted on PubMed Central, gives the revised minimum age of 50,200 years for the Leang Bulu' Sipong 4 hunting scene, states the original 2019 estimate it supersedes, and describes the therianthropic figures and their interpretation. Because cave art dating in this region has been revised more than once as techniques improve, this event states the current best estimate rather than treating any single number as final.
Sources
- Oktaviana et al.. Narrative cave art in Indonesia by 51,200 years ago (Nature, 2024, hosted on PubMed Central/NIH) (2024) · Peer-reviewed (author-declared)ncbi.nlm.nih.gov · Cited as a "journal" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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