Sulawesi Cave Art: The World's Oldest Figurative Paintings

Sulawesi cave art, preserved in limestone caves of the Maros-Pangkep region of Indonesia, includes the oldest known figurative paintings in the world. A life-size warty pig in Leang Tedongnge has been dated to at least 45,500 years ago, and a small scene of human-like figures and a pig in Leang Karampuang to at least 51,200 years ago. These discoveries, published between 2014 and 2024, overturned the long-held view that figurative cave art began in Ice Age Europe.

The Maros-Pangkep karst

Sulawesi is a large, oddly shaped island in Wallacea, the zone of islands between mainland Asia and Australia–New Guinea that was never joined to either continent by land bridges. Reaching it always required a sea crossing, even when sea levels were much lower during the last Ice Age.

North of the city of Makassar, in the regencies of Maros and Pangkajene and Islands (Pangkep), lies a dramatic landscape of tower karst: steep limestone hills riddled with caves and rock shelters. Hundreds of these sites are decorated. The local word for cave, leang, begins most of their names.

Dutch researchers began documenting the paintings in the 1950s, when hand stencils were recorded at Leang Pettakere and other caves. For decades, however, the art was assumed to be no more than a few thousand years old, made perhaps by early farming communities. Nobody had tested that assumption with direct dating.

How the paintings were dated

Paint made from mineral pigments such as red ochre contains no carbon, so it cannot be dated by radiocarbon. Instead, an Australian and Indonesian team led by archaeologist Maxime Aubert and Adam Brumm turned to small knobbly growths of calcite, known as cave popcorn or coralloid speleothems, that had formed over some paintings.

When water seeps through limestone it carries tiny amounts of dissolved uranium, but almost no thorium. As calcite crystallises, it traps this uranium, which then slowly decays into thorium at a known rate. Measuring the ratio of the two gives the age of the crust. Because the crust grew on top of the paint, its age is a minimum age for the art beneath: the painting must be older.

In 2024 the team introduced a refined technique, laser-ablation uranium-series imaging, which maps the age of the crust layer by layer and reduces the risk of contamination from younger calcite. This method produced the oldest dates yet.

The key discoveries

2014: hand stencils and a babirusa

The first results, published in Nature in October 2014, came from seven caves in Maros. A hand stencil at Leang Timpuseng had a minimum age of about 39,900 years, and a painting of a female babirusa, a pig-deer native to Sulawesi, nearby was at least 35,400 years old.

The news was a shock. At the time the oldest dated cave art was in Spain, where a red disk in Cueva de El Castillo had a minimum age of 40,800 years. Figurative animal paintings of similar antiquity were now known at opposite ends of the world.

2019: the earliest hunting scene

In 2019 the team published a 4.5 m wide panel in the cave of Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4, discovered in 2017. It shows several small human-like figures, some with animal features such as beaks or tails, confronting pigs and dwarf buffalo called anoa, apparently with spears or ropes. A minimum age of about 43,900 years made it the oldest known depiction of a story or scene. The 2024 re-analysis pushed its minimum age to around 48,000 years.

The part-human, part-animal figures are called therianthropes. Similar beings appear much later in European art, for example in the ivory Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel, and they are often taken as evidence for mythological or spiritual thinking.

2021: the Leang Tedongnge warty pig

Leang Tedongnge lies in a remote valley that can only be reached during the dry season. In 2017 Indonesian archaeologist Basran Burhan, then a doctoral student, surveyed it with local guides and recorded a painting of a Sulawesi warty pig (Sus celebensis), a wild pig still hunted on the island.

The animal measures about 136 by 54 cm and is painted in dark red pigment, with a crest of upright hairs and the characteristic facial warts of adult males. Two hand stencils sit above its back, and it appears to face other pigs that are now only partly preserved. In January 2021 the team reported a minimum age of 45,500 years, then the oldest dated figurative art in the world.

2024: the Leang Karampuang scene

In July 2024 a team led by Adhi Agus Oktaviana of Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) published a scene from Leang Karampuang in Maros. It shows three small human-like figures around a pig, painted in red. Laser-ablation dating gave a minimum age of about 51,200 years, making it the oldest known figurative painting and the oldest known narrative scene.

Who were the artists?

The paintings are generally attributed to Homo sapiens. Modern humans had spread out of Africa and into southern Asia by this period, and they crossed the sea to reach Australia by at least around 50,000 years ago, possibly earlier. Sulawesi lies on one of the likely island-hopping routes, so its painters may have belonged to the same broad population as the first Australians.

Other humans also lived in the region. Stone tools at Talepu in southern Sulawesi are more than 100,000 years old, and Homo floresiensis lived on nearby Flores. There is no evidence that these earlier groups made paintings, and no human bones have been found in direct association with the Maros-Pangkep art. The attribution to Homo sapiens therefore rests on the dates and the wider archaeological picture rather than on skeletal remains.

What the paintings show

Animals dominate the oldest art. Pigs, especially the Sulawesi warty pig, are the most frequent subject, followed by anoa and babirusa. These were large animals that people hunted, and they are painted with close attention to body shape, hair and markings.

Hand stencils are even more common. They were made by placing a hand on the rock and blowing or spitting pigment around it, leaving a negative outline. Hand stencils are found on almost every inhabited continent and were made over tens of thousands of years, from Sulawesi and Borneo to Spain, France and Argentina.

The scenes are perhaps the most significant element. Showing several figures interacting implies storytelling, an ability that many researchers consider central to human culture.

Sulawesi is not the only island in the region with very old art. In the limestone caves of East Kalimantan, in Indonesian Borneo, the same research group dated a painting of a wild cattle-like animal to at least 40,000 years ago, along with hand stencils of similar age. Borneo and Sulawesi may have shared an early artistic tradition, although they were separated by sea.

Later phases of rock art are also present in Maros-Pangkep. Drawings in black pigment, including boats, geometric designs and human figures, are generally thought to be much younger, perhaps linked to Austronesian-speaking communities who reached Sulawesi within the last few thousand years. The caves therefore preserve a long, layered record of human imagery rather than a single episode.

Threats and conservation

The paintings are deteriorating. Panels are flaking away as the rock surface exfoliates, a process driven by salt crystals that grow in the limestone as water evaporates. A 2021 study led by Jillian Huntley linked the damage to alternating wet and dry conditions in the tropical monsoon climate, which may be intensifying as the climate warms. Some panels documented in the 1950s have already lost much of their surface.

Much of the karst lies within Bantimurung-Bulusaraung National Park, but limestone quarrying for cement has affected parts of the wider region. Indonesian heritage authorities and researchers have called for systematic recording and monitoring before more art is lost.

Myths and facts

• Myth: cave art began in Europe. The European caves were simply studied first. Sulawesi’s figurative art is older than any securely dated European example.
• Myth: the dates are exact. Uranium-series results are minimum ages. The art could be older than reported, but not younger.
• Myth: one cave holds all the oldest art. The key dates come from several different caves across the Maros-Pangkep karst, and similar early art exists in Borneo.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1950s: Dutch researchers record hand stencils in caves at Maros, including Leang Pettakere.
• 2014, October: Aubert and colleagues report minimum ages of about 39,900 years for a hand stencil and 35,400 years for a babirusa painting.
• 2017: The Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4 hunting scene and the Leang Tedongnge warty pig are recorded.
• 2018: The same research group reports a painted animal at least 40,000 years old in a cave in East Kalimantan, Borneo.
• 2019, December: The Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4 scene is published with a minimum age of 43,900 years.
• 2021, January: The Leang Tedongnge warty pig is published with a minimum age of 45,500 years.
• 2024, July: The Leang Karampuang scene is published with a minimum age of 51,200 years.

Why it matters

The Sulawesi paintings show that figurative art, and even storytelling in pictures, were part of human life in Southeast Asia long before the painted caves of France and Spain, such as Chauvet. They suggest that these abilities were carried by early Homo sapiens as they spread out of Africa, rather than invented in one region.