Rock art from at least 67,800 years ago in Sulawesi.

ABSTRACT: The Indonesian archipelago is host to some of the earliest known rock art in the world^1-5. Previously, secure Pleistocene dates were reported for figurative cave art and stencils of human hands in two areas in Indonesia-the Maros-Pangkep karsts in the southwestern peninsula of the island of Sulawesi^1,3-5 and the Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat region of eastern Kalimantan, Borneo². Here we describe a series of early dated rock art motifs from the southeastern portion of Sulawesi. Among this assemblage of Pleistocene (and possibly more recent) motifs, laser-ablation U-series (LA-U-series) dating of calcite overlying a hand stencil from Liang Metanduno on Muna Island yielded a U-series date of 71.6 ± 3.8 thousand years ago (ka), providing a minimum-age constraint of

SUBMITTER: Oktaviana AA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12916292 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature