Sulawesi caves

The paintings were found in the karst caves of Sulawesi, an island just east of Borneo
with four long peninsulas that radiate like flower petals. Archaeologists have known
about the cave art for decades. They've also found shellfish, animal bones, pigment-
stained stone tools and even ochre "crayons" inside these caverns.

The cave paintings were assumed to be prehistoric, but relatively "young," perhaps
created by the region's first farmers a few thousand years ago or hunter-gatherers
around 8,000 years ago at the earliest, Aubert told Live Science in an email. But
scientists had never tried to date the artworks before.

Stylistically, some of the paintings resemble those found in Europe. There are hand
stencils that would have been created as a person spit or sprayed red pigment over his or
her hand to leave the outline of a handprint. These look quite similar to the hand
stencils found in the El Castillo cave in Spain, estimated to be 37,300 years old. (At
40,800 years old, a red disk on the wall of El Castillo cave was proclaimed to be the
oldest reliably dated wall painting ever in a 2012 study in the journal Science.)

As for the figurative paintings, artists in Europe and Southeast Asia apparently shared a
favorite subject: wild animals. But while prehistoric paintings in places such as Chauvet
Cave in France depict cave lions, horses and hyenas, the animals represented in
Sulawesi include fruit-eating pig-deer called babirusas, Celebes warty pigs and midget
buffalos also known as anoas.