A Cave Painting of a Wild Pig Found on Sulawesi May be the Oldest Figurative Cave Art

In 2017 a research team led by Basran Burhan discovered a painting of a wild pig, outlined and filled in with mulberry-hued pigment in a cave called Leang Tedongne on the island of Sulawesi. This painting dates back "at least 45,500 years."

Becky Ferreira reported this discovery in the The New York Times on January 13, 2021, from which I quote selections: 

"Sulawesi was already considered by some experts to be the site of the earliest known representational cave art in the world. A captivating scene elsewhere on the island, which displays human-animal hybrids, was found to be at least 43,900 years old, reported by the same team in a 2019 study."

"The Leang Tedongnge site is only about 40 miles from Makassar, a bustling city of some 1.5 million people. But the cave has remained virtually untouched because it is so challenging to reach.

“Getting to it requires a difficult trek along a rough forest path that winds through mountainous terrain and ends in a narrow cave passage, which is the only entrance to the valley,” said Adam Brumm, also an archaeologist at Griffith University and a co-author of the study. “The valley can only be accessed during the dry season; during the wet season the valley floor is completely flooded and the residents have to travel around on dugout canoes.”

The discovery was formally published in Science Advances  on 13 Jan 2021: Vol. 7, no. 3, eabd4648 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abd4648.

Here is the abstract:

"Indonesia harbors some of the oldest known surviving cave art. Previously, the earliest dated rock art from this region was a figurative painting of a Sulawesi warty pig (Sus celebensis). This image from Leang Bulu’ Sipong 4 in the limestone karsts of Maros-Pangkep, South Sulawesi, was created at least 43,900 years ago (43.9 ka) based on Uranium-series dating. Here, we report the Uranium-series dating of two figurative cave paintings of Sulawesi warty pigs recently discovered in the same karst area. The oldest, with a minimum age of 45.5 ka, is from Leang Tedongnge. The second image, from Leang Balangajia 1, dates to at least 32 ka. To our knowledge, the animal painting from Leang Tedongnge is the earliest known representational work of art in the world. There is no reason to suppose, however, that this early rock art is a unique example in Island Southeast Asia or the wider region."