Jan 21 (Reuters) – The painted outline of a human hand inside a cave on the Indonesian island of Muna represents what researchers are calling the oldest example of rock art in the world, created at least 67,800 years ago.The reddish-colored stenciled image has become faded over time and is barely visible on a cave wall, but nonetheless embodies an early achievement of human creativity as our species spread worldwide after arising in Africa. The people responsible for this rock art, the researchers said, were part of a population that made its way from mainland Asia to the islands of Indonesia, and later may have continued on to Australia.The hand stencil was discovered in a limestone cave called Liang Metanduno on Muna, a satellite island off the southeastern peninsula of the large island of Sulawesi east of Borneo. The researchers determined the minimum age of the image by analyzing small amounts of the element uranium in mineral layers that gradually formed atop the pigment.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe image and others like it that were discovered were made by blowing pigment over a hand placed against the rock wall, the researchers said.”The oldest hand stencil described here is distinctive because it belongs to a style found only in Sulawesi. The tips of the fingers were carefully reshaped to make them appear pointed,” 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.”It was almost as if they were deliberately trying to transform this image of a human hand into something else – an animal claw perhaps. Clearly they had some deeper cultural meaning but we don’t know what that was. I suspect it was something to do with these ancient peoples’ complex symbolic relationship with the animal world,” said Griffith University archaeologist and study co-author Adam Brumm.The hand stencil i …
