A hand that still reaches us
In a limestone cave on a small island off Sulawesi, someone pressed a hand against a rock wall and blew pigment around it. The result was brief, efficient, and intimate. A negative image of a human hand. Nearly seventy thousand years later, it still holds.
This hand stencil, dated to at least 67,800 years ago, is now the oldest known example of rock art anywhere on Earth. It is older than the famous cave paintings of Europe and older than previous discoveries from Sulawesi itself. It does not show a hunt or an animal or a story in motion. It shows presence.
The discovery, reported in Nature1 by Adhi Agus Oktaviana and colleagues, does more than push back a date. It reframes how early Homo sapiens moved across the world and what they carried with them.
“It is now evident from our new phase of research that Sulawesi was home to one of the world’s richest and most longstanding artistic cultures, one with origins in the earliest history of human occupation of the island at least 67,800 years ago.”
— Maxime Aubert
