World’s oldest cave art discovered in Indonesia’s Muna island

Indonesia and the surrounding region is known for some of the world’s most ancient archaeological finds.Published On 22 Jan 2026Archaeologists have found that handprints stencilled on limestone caves on the Indonesian island of Muna could be up to 67,800 years old, making them the oldest known paintings in the world.The tan-coloured drawings analysed by Indonesian and Australian researchers were made by blowing pigment over hands placed against the cave walls, leaving an outline, scientists said on Wednesday.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4Ancient Aboriginal rock art, African sites make UNESCO World Heritage listlist 2 of 4Indonesian rescuers find wreckage of plane that had 11 people on boardlist 3 of 4The Ancient Egyptian stone that Britain refuses to returnlist 4 of 4Ancient Khmer temples scarred by Thailand-Cambodia conflictend of listAccording to the Jakarta Post news outlet, archaeologist Adhi Agus Oktaviana from Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) has been looking for hand stencils in the Muna Island region, in Sulawesi province, since 2015.Adhi found the hand stencils, which have now been dated, under newer paintings in the cave of a person riding a horse alongside a chicken.At first, Adhi said it was difficult to prove to his co-researchers that the stencils were hands as he believed, but he “finally found some spots that looked like human fingers”.Some of the fingertips were also tweaked to look more pointed.“The oldest hand stencil described here is distinctive because it belongs to a style found only in Sulawesi,” said Maxime Aubert, a specialist in archaeological science at Griffith University in Australia who helped lead the research published on Wednesday in the journal Nature.“The tips of the fingers were carefully reshaped to make them appear pointed,” Aubert said.Aubert’s co-author, Adam Brumm, who is also an archaeologist at Griffith University, said it appeared the people who painted the hands may have been trying to depict something else.This image provided by Maxime Aubert shows cave drawings in Sulawesi province, Indonesia, of a human figure and a bird with a faded handprint in between them [Maxime Aubert/AP Photo]“It was almost as if they were deliberately trying to transform this image of a human hand into something else – an animal claw perhaps,” said Brumm.