Researchers have discovered a hand stencil in a cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi that dates to 67,800 years ago, making it the oldest known rock art in the world. The faded 14 × 10 cm patch of pigment, found on the southeastern peninsula of Sulawesi, was dated using Uranium-series analysis of mineral crusts that formed on top of the painting. The discovery was made by a team from Griffith University in Australia, Indonesian archaeological organizations, and the National Research and Innovation Agency, who have been documenting cave art sites in the region since 2019.
This finding pushes back the timeline for human artistic expression by thousands of years and supports the "long chronology" theory that humans arrived in Australia and surrounding regions as early as 60,000–65,000 years ago. The hand stencil, with its uniquely pointed finger tips that may have had symbolic meaning, demonstrates that Sulawesi was home to a vibrant and longstanding artistic culture during the Late Pleistocene epoch. It also suggests that early humans were creating symbolic art as they moved through Southeast Asia on their maritime journey to Sahul, the paleocontinent comprising Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania.