Indonesia’s 68,000-year-old handprint: the birth of human art?
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A hand stencil discovered in Metanduno cave on Muna Island, Indonesia, has been identified as the world's oldest known rock art, dating back at least 67,800 years. The finding, published in Nature on January 21, challenges the theory that artistic expression originated in Ice Age Europe. Indonesian researcher Dr. Adhi Agus Oktaviana first spotted the faint handprint in 2015. A sample collected in 2019 was analyzed by Griffith University in Australia, revealing that the stencil predates all previously known rock paintings by at least 15,000 years. This discovery suggests that early humans in Southeast Asia were capable of symbolic thought and artistic expression much earlier than previously believed.
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