Not long ago, researchers found the oldest Neanderthal cave art in Gibraltar: a carving that closely resembled a Twitter hashtag. Back in the 1950s, paintings were found in a cave in Indonesia that were also thought to be pretty old. Scientists were recently able to date the hand stencils and animal paintings as being around 40,000 years old, making them the oldest artworks ever found in the world.
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The researchers believe that the hand stencils were made by "blowing red pigment over a hand placed against the cave wall’s surface." The scientists used uranium-thorium dating (which wasn't an option in the '50s) to "estimate the age of the bumpy layers of calcium carbonate (known as ‘cave popcorn’) that formed on the surface of the paintings." Maxime Auber, the archeologist who led the team that found the art said that it "allows us to move away from the view that Europe was special...there was some idea that early Europeans were more aware of themselves and their surroundings. Now we can say that’s not true."
To learn more about the discovery, head over to Nature to read the published article.
[via Artnet]
