A simple handprint discovered in a cave in Indonesia has just shaken up the chronology of prehistoric art. Since 2015, archaeologist Adhi Agus Oktaviana, a researcher at the Indonesian National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN), has been studying prehistoric handprints on the island of Muna, Sulawesi province. His research brought to light a negative hand (hand stencil) painted with ocher, discovered in the Liang Metanduno cave, located in a karst area of Sulawesi, a large island in Indonesia between Southeast Asia and Australia–New Guinea.
Today, the outline of the negative hand is very blurred and difficult to see with the naked eye due to tens of millennia of erosion. Only a fragment of the palm and part of the fingers remain in the form of a pale ocher shadow. A remarkable feature is that the ends of the fingers have been deliberately represented in a tapered and pointed manner, evoking the claw of an animal. According to the researchers, this intentional modification of the pattern – achieved either by touching up the outline with a brush or by moving the hand slightly when spraying pigment – is a style documented only in Sulawesi.
Stencils of “negative hands” with narrow fingers discovered at the Leang Jarie site, Maros, Sulawesi.
© Ahdi Agus Oktaviana
Researchers do not know the precise meaning of this “claw-shaped” hand. However, they see it as the expression of a deep cultural symbolism specific to the artists of the time. Furthermore, this imprint is not an isolated case. Similar, better-preserved images of pointed hands were spotted in the same region, indicating that this was a repeated pattern.
To establish the age of the painting, the international team used uranium dating (uranium-thorium) using a precise technique. Tiny mineral concretions of calcite had formed over time on top of the hand pigment. The researchers took small samples (around 5 mm) of these calcitic deposits. They analyzed them by laser ablation coupled with mass spectrometry in order to measure the traces of uranium and thorium they contain. This process makes it possible to determine when these minerals formed on the paint. The calcite covering Liang Metanduno’s hand puts the minimum age of the pattern at around 67,800 years. A second hand negative located nearby has been dated to around 60,900 years ago.
This discovery considerably pushes back the date of the first known artistic expressions. It fills an important gap in the history of human migrations in Southeast Asia. The Sulawesi hand now surpasses the previous record for cave art in Indonesia by 16,000 years and the oldest European paintings by more than 30,000 years.
By establishing that Homo sapiens was already creating symbolic images nearly 68 millennia ago in this region, the researchers provide a decisive archaeological clue to the early settlement of Australia. Muna Cave now provides the oldest direct evidence of the presence of Homo sapiens along the northern migratory corridor (mainland Southeast Asia → Borneo → Sulawesi → New Guinea/Australia).
The negative hand of Sulawesi sheds light on the cognitive capacities and the symbolic universe of humans at the end of the Pleistocene. First, the very creation of this painting demonstrates abstract thinking and sophisticated artistic intention. Then, the voluntary modification of the shape (fingers elongated into claws) reveals an element of imagination and advanced creativity.
