Prehistoric Paintings in Indonesia May Be Oldest Cave Art Ever

Paintings of miniature buffalos, warty pigs and human hands covering the walls and ceilings of caves in Indonesia could be among the oldest examples of cave art in the world, a new study finds.

The paintings — some of which might be more than 40,000 years old — challenge Europe's standing as the birthplace of prehistoric art.

"It was previously thought that Western Europe was the centerpiece of a 'symbolic explosion' in early human artistic activity, such as cave painting and other forms of image making, including figurative art, around 40,000 years ago," said study leader Maxime Aubert, an archaeologist and geochemist at Australia's Griffith University. "However, our findings show that cave art was made at opposite ends of the Pleistocene Eurasian world at about the same time, suggesting these practices have deeper origins — perhaps in Africa before our species left this continent and spread across the globe." 

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.

Prehistoric 'popcorn'

Adam Brumm, an archaeologist at Australia's University of Wollongong, first noticed small cauliflowerlike knobs on some of the hand stencils while doing research in Sulawesi in 2011. These crusty bumps were actually calcite deposits known as coralloid speleothems or, more informally, "cave popcorn." The deposits contain tiny amounts of radioactive uranium, which decays to thorium over time. By measuring the ratio of uranium to thorium in the layers of cave popcorn, scientists can determine the minimum age of underlying artwork.

Aubert and his colleagues determined the age of 14 paintings inside seven caves. The artworks range in age from 17,400 years old to 39,900 years old, the study found. But since uranium dating of the cave popcorn layer that grew on top of the art only provides a minimum age, these paintings could be much older, the researchers said. The findings were published today (Oct. 8) in the journal Nature.

The oldest painting — a hand stencil — was discovered on a 13-foot-high (4 meters) ceiling in a cave known as Leang Timpuseng in Sulawesi's southwestern peninsula. The researchers say this is now the earliest known example of a hand stencil, and it also represents the earliest evidence for a human presence on Sulawesi.

In the same cave, a painting of a babirusa was found to be at least 35,400 years old. That means this pig-deer could be the oldest known figurative work of art in the world — older than the beasts that line the walls of Chauvet Cave.

Origins of art

The revelation that art was being made on opposite sides of the world during the Ice Age suggests that symbolic painting could have originated independently — or perhaps art-making originated much earlier, in Africa, where humans evolved before marching out to other continents about 100,000 years ago.

Benjamin Smith, a rock-art expert and a professor at the University of Western Australia who was not involved in the study, said it is "highly important, but not surprising, that we have finally found evidence that settlers in Southeast Asia had rock art as part of their cultural package some 40,000 years ago."

Archaeologists already had some clues that this "cultural package" predated the cathedrals of cave art in Europe. Ochre, a reddish natural pigment, has been found on human remains in burials in Israel dating back to 100,000 years ago, Smith said, and humans left decorated pieces of ochre and ostrich eggshell in caves in South Africa as early as 100,000 years ago.

But whether figurative art developed before the exodus from Africa or soon thereafter remains to be seen, Smith told Live Science.

"But what is clear is that those who continue to try to place Europe at the center of the human story hold an untenable position," Smith wrote in an email. He thinks scientists studying the origins of art and symbolic thought should instead shift their attention to Africa, Asia and Oceania.
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Gannon, Megan. 2014. “Prehistoric Paintings in Indonesia May Be Oldest Cave Art Ever”. Live Science. Posted: October 8, 2014. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/48200-oldest-cave-art-indonesia.html

'Peking Man' Was a Fashion Plate

"Peking Man," a human ancestor who lived in China between roughly 200,000 and 750,000 years ago, was a wood-working, fire-using, spear-hafting hominid who, mysteriously, liked to drill holes into objects for unknown reasons.

And, yes, these hominids, a form of Homo erectus, appear to have been quite meticulous about their clothing, using stone tools to soften and depress animal hides.

The new discoveries paint a picture of a human ancestor who was more sophisticated than previously believed.

Peking Man was first discovered in 1923 in a cave near the village of Zhoukoudian, close to Beijing (at that time called Peking). During 1941, at the height of World War II, fossils of Peking Man went missing, depriving scientists of valuable information.

Recently, researchers have embarked on a re-excavation of the cave site searching for artifacts and answers as to how the Peking Man lived. Just as importantly, they engaged in new lab work that includes using powerful microscopes to look at artifacts made by Peking Man to determine how they were used, a process archaeologists called "use-wear" analysis.

On Dec. 15, four of these scientists gathered at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum to give an update on their most recent findings. Three of the scientists, Xing Gao, Yue Zhang and Shuangquan Zhang are with the Chinese Academy of Science's Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology. The fourth, Chen Shen, is a curator at the Toronto museum and a special member of the academy.

Among their archaeological findings is a 300,000-year-old "activity floor" (as the scientists call it) containing what may be a hearth and fireplace, akin to a prehistoric living room. Analysis is ongoing and Yue Zhang noted that 3D scanners are being used to map it. If the results hold up, it may prove once and for all that Peking Man was able to control fire, an important skill given the chilly weather at times in northern China.

Spear discovery

The use-wear analysis of Peking Man's tools yielded several interesting finds. Chen Shen said that analysis of the base of Peking Man's stone tools reveal that the hominid "likely" attached stone points to sticks creating a sort of spear. It's an important step in human development as it involves putting two materials, the stone tip and stick, together to form a composite tool.

Scientists are still trying to determine the details. For instance, Shen said it is possible that Peking Man was making spears with short sticks. While not as useful for hunting, the short stick would act as "an extension of the tool," and "you can hold it while you are scrapping or engraving," Shen said in an interview with LiveScience. Researchers are also trying to determine whether Peking Man used some form of sticky organic material to aid in the process of hafting a spear.

Another question is how this fits, chronologically, with other recent prehistoric findings. Just last month, scientists working in South Africa reported in the journal Science that another hominid named Homo heidelbergensis was making spears500,000 years ago (in its case likely to hunt animals). This leaves researchers with the question whether Peking Man, a different hominid, started making spears at around the same time.

More mysteries

The team also found evidence through the use-wear analysis that Peking Man was working wood (which didn't preserve in the cave) with their stone tools, possibly to turn it into wooden tools.

Perhaps the strangest finding was evidence for "drilling." Shen explained they don't know what the hominids were drilling into, or why, but they were certainly engaging in it with their stone tools. There is no evidence so far that Peking Man made ornaments or what we would consider art.

Finally, the analysis shows that Peking Man had an interest in clothes. "A certain proportion of tools were being used for the working and scraping of hides," Shen said in the interview..

"If they are depressing the hides, if they are softening hides, they can use the hides for their clothes," something no sophisticated hominids would dare live without.
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References:

Jarus, Owen. 2013. “'Peking Man' Was a Fashion Plate”. Live Science. Posted: December 31, 2012. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/25887-peking-man-hominid-fashion.html

Mongolia and the Altai Mountains: Origins of genetic blending between Europeans and Asians

A group of researchers led by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) has discovered the first scientific evidence of genetic blending between Europeans and Asians in the remains of ancient Scythian warriors living over 2,000 years ago in the Altai region of Mongolia. Contrary to what was believed until now, the results published in PLoS ONE indicate that this blending was not due to an eastward migration of Europeans, but to a demographic expansion of local Central Asian populations, thanks to the technological improvements the Scythian culture brought with them.

The Altai is a mountain range in Central Asia occupying territories of Russia and Kazakhstan to the west and of Mongolia and China to the east. Historically, the Central Asian steppes have been a corridor for Asian and European populations, resulting in the region's large diversity in population today. In ancient times however the Altai Mountains, located in the middle of the steppes, represented an important barrier for the coexistence and mixture of the populations living on each side. And so they lived isolated during millennia: Europeans on the western side and Asians on the eastern side.

The research conducted by researchers from the UAB, the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont and the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (UPF-CSIC) sheds new light on when and how this Eurasian genetic blending took place.

At the UAB palaeogenetic laboratory researchers analysed mitochondrial DNA (inherited from the mother, it allows us to trace our ancestors) extracted from the bones and teeth of 19 skeletons from the Bronze Age (7th to 10th century BCE) and from the Iron Age (2nd to 7th century BCE) from the Mongolian Altai Mountains. The remains were extracted from the tombs discovered seven years ago, in which the skeletons of Scythian warriors were discovered and which represented the first scientific evidence of this culture in East Asia.

The results obtained demonstrate that the population from the Iron Age, corresponding to the time when the Scythian culture resided in the Altai Mountains, had a perfect blend (50%) of European and Asian mitochondrial DNA lineages or sequences. The discovery is relevant, taking into account that previous populations showed no signs of lineage mixture: the DNA analysed in the tombs located in Russia and Kazakhstan belong to European lineages, whereas DNA from the eastern part, in Mongolia, contain Asian lineages.

"The results provide exceptionally valuable information about how and when the population diversity found today in Central Asian steppes appeared. They point to the possibility that this occurred in Altai over 2,000 years ago between the local population on both sides of the mountain range, coinciding with the expansion of the Scythian culture, which came from the west", explains Assumpció Malgosa, professor of Biological Anthropology at UAB and coordinator of the research.

Studies conducted until now on ancient DNA samples from the Altai region already indicated that the Scythians were the first large population to be a mixture between Europeans and Asians. However, the only populations to be studied were those on the western part of the Eurasian steppes, suggesting that this mixture was due to population migrations from Europe to the east.

The current research is the first to offer scientific evidence of this population mixture on the eastern side of the Altai and indicates that the contact between European and Asian lineages occurred before the Iron Age when populations were present on both sides of the mountain. The study suggests that the Asian population adopted the Scythian culture, technologically and socially more advanced, and this made them improve demographically by favouring their expansion and contact with Europeans.

The idea poses a new hypothesis on the origin of today's population diversity in Central Asia and allows for a better understanding of the demographic processes which took place.

Frozen Scythian Warrior Tombs

From 2005 to 2007, UAB researchers worked jointly with French and Mongolian researchers in a European project to excavate Scythian tombs in Mongolia's Altai Mountains. In the three excavation campaigns carried out over twenty tombs were excavated. Many of them were frozen and contained mummified human remains of warriors buried with their possessions and horses. This was the first time Scythian warrior tombs had been discovered in Mongolia, since all other tombs previously found had been located on the western side of Altai.

The Scythians were an Indo-European people dedicated to nomadic pasturing and horse breeding. They crossed the Eurasian steppes from the Caspian Sea until reaching the Altai Mountains during the 2nd and 7th century BCE. The Scythians are known most of all thanks to ancient texts written by the Greek historian Herodotus.
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References:

EurekAlert. 2012. “Mongolia and the Altai Mountains: Origins of genetic blending between Europeans and Asians”. EurekAlert. Posted: November 12, 2012. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-11/uadb-mat111212.php