World's oldest cave art discovered in Indonesia

A red stencil of a hand pressed against the wall of an Indonesian cave is the oldest rock art ever discovered, scientists said on Jan 21, and sheds light on how humans first migrated to Australia.

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Prehistoric cave paintings in the Sulawesi province of Indonesia. At 67,000 years old, the Indonesian stencils are more than a thousand years older than other hand stencils found in a Spanish cave that have been attributed to Neanderthals.

(PHOTO: AFP)

The cave art dates back at least 67,800 years, according to research published in the journal Nature by a team of Indonesian and Australian archaeologists.

"We have been working in Indonesia for a long time," study coauthor Maxime Aubert of Australia's Griffith University told AFP.

This time, they ventured to caves on the island of Muna in the Sulawesi province on the advice of Indonesian archaeologist Adhi Agus Oktaviana, the study’s lead author.

There, they found “handprints in negative, stencilled, probably using red ochre", Professor Aubert said.