1] Centre for Archaeological Science, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales 2522, Australia [2] Place, Evolution and Rock Art Heritage Unit (PERAHU), Griffith University, Gold Coast, Queensland 4222, Australia [3].
1] Centre for Archaeological Science, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales 2522, Australia [2] Environmental Futures Research Institute, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland 4111, Australia. [3].
Nature. 2014 Oct 9;514(7521):223-7. doi: 10.1038/nature13422.
Archaeologists have long been puzzled by the appearance in Europe ∼40-35 thousand years (kyr) ago of a rich corpus of sophisticated artworks, including parietal art (that is, paintings, drawings and engravings on immobile rock surfaces) and portable art (for example, carved figurines), and the absence or scarcity of equivalent, well-dated evidence elsewhere, especially along early human migration routes in South Asia and the Far East, including Wallacea and Australia, where modern humans (Homo sapiens) were established by 50 kyr ago. Here, using uranium-series dating of coralloid speleothems directly associated with 12 human hand stencils and two figurative animal depictions from seven cave sites in the Maros karsts of Sulawesi, we show that rock art traditions on this Indonesian island are at least compatible in age with the oldest European art. The earliest dated image from Maros, with a minimum age of 39.9 kyr, is now the oldest known hand stencil in the world. In addition, a painting of a babirusa ('pig-deer') made at least 35.4 kyr ago is among the earliest dated figurative depictions worldwide, if not the earliest one. Among the implications, it can now be demonstrated that humans were producing rock art by ∼40 kyr ago at opposite ends of the Pleistocene Eurasian world.
考古学家长期以来一直对欧洲出现丰富的复杂艺术品感到困惑，这些艺术品包括壁画（即在固定岩石表面上的绘画、素描和雕刻）和便携式艺术品（例如雕刻的小雕像），而在其他地方，尤其是在南亚和远东的早期人类迁徙路线上，包括华莱士地区和澳大利亚，都没有或很少有同等的、有明确年代的证据，而在这些地方，现代人类（智人）在 5 万年前就已经存在。在这里，我们利用与来自苏拉威西岛马罗斯喀斯特地区的七个洞穴遗址的 12 个人类手印和两个具象动物描绘直接相关的珊瑚状洞穴钟乳石的铀系测年，表明该印度尼西亚岛屿上的岩石艺术传统的年龄至少与最古老的欧洲艺术相当。来自马罗斯的最早有日期的图像，其最小年龄为 39.9 千年，现在是世界上已知的最古老的手印。此外，一幅至少在 35.4 千年前创作的野猪（“猪鹿”）的绘画是世界上最早有日期的具象描绘之一，如果不是最早的话。其影响之一是，现在可以证明人类在更新世欧亚大陆的两端都在创作岩石艺术，时间至少可以追溯到 4 万年前。
