Prehistoric Cave Art Discovered in the Tropics

Hand stencils. Credit: Kinez Riza Humans are intrinsically artists. Cave paintings and hand-carved figurines found in France, Spain and Italy suggest that Homo sapiens were crafting 35-40 thousand years ago. But, up to now scientists have been puzzled by the lack of equally old art in South Asia and the Far East, where humans dwelled at the same time as their artistic European counterparts. Now the mystery has been put to rest. Archaeologists have recently determined that a series of stencils and paintings in prehistoric caves on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi are some of the oldest in the world, dating back nearly 40,000 years.