Dan Snow's History Hit - Indonesian Cave Art: A Dramatic New Discovery

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

It’s a paradox for the ages, breaking news about people who lived and died thousands of years ago. This discovery is no different, because Adam Brumm and his team in Sulawesi have released their discovery of the oldest known art. The paintings on the Indonesian island are over 45,500 years old, and feature three pigs alongside the stencilled outlines of the hands of their prehistoric painter. Listen as Adam tells Tristan about his research on this beautiful island, how the pigs were discovered and what they can tell us about early people.

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's history hit. Got breaking news for you now. You'll all have seen the huge discovery, the huge news from an Indonesian cave,

which was inhabited during the Ice Age by human beings. And there's a vast amount of cave art that's just been deciphered on its walls. This discovery in Sulawesi has made everybody very excited indeed Tristan on our sister podcast the ancients managed to get professor Adam Brum from Griffith University in Brisbane part of the team that made the discovery on Sulawesi he managed to get him on the ancients and so straight away quick smart we have seconded Tristan and Adam onto the history Hit podcast so you guys can hear all about this huge new discovery and it's important to know about because there's going to be a lot more to

come. Very, very exciting indeed. So I hope you enjoy it. If you like The Ancients, go and subscribe and all that kind of stuff wherever you get your pods. In the meantime, don't forget the January sale is still on. History Hit TV is having a crazy cheap month. If you go and use the code JANUARY, you get a month for free, and then you get three months for 80% off. So just a few. I can't do the calculations, to be honest with you, but it's a few pence.

It's a very few pence. I mean, it's less than the price of a pint of beer for the next three months. So you should definitely go and check that out. World's Best History Channel. You're going to love it. No aliens in sight. Pretty sweet. But in the meantime, everyone, let's get straight to the exciting news. Here's Tristan talking to Professor Adam Brum. Enjoy. Now, this is huge news. This is breaking news. Well, for the Joe blogs like me, this is breaking news. Not for you guys who have been hiding it for so long.

You and your team have found, can we say, the oldest figurative cave art that we know of in early 2021 in the world. Yeah, yeah, that we know of. That's the key phrase here. It's the oldest dated, this cave painting, which we now have dated to at least 45 and a half thousand years ago it's the oldest known dated evidence for representational or figurative art of any kind anywhere in the world as far as we're aware you know as always with these things we don't expect that claim to stand for very long we hope it doesn't stand for very long i certainly hope it i'll be very disappointed if this turns out to be the oldest art that's ever found, the oldest figurative art. That would be terrible. But yeah, at the moment, you know, to our knowledge, this is what we have found. This is what we have on our hands. So let's talk through going up to the discovery, as it were.

Let's set the scene because, Adam, where in the world are we talking about with this new discovery? Well, the new discovery is on an island in the middle of the Indonesian archipelago known as Sulawesi. And in the older literature, this island was called Celebes or the Celebes. And you'll see that if anyone has a familiarity with the early maritime journeys of early European explorers through that region and the history of the spice trade and all of these really fascinating stories from the past. They will really have an intimate familiarity with this island called Celebes. But it's known today as Sulawesi, and it's essentially almost directly in the centre of the Indonesian archipelago, which, of course, is the largest maritime nation on earth in Southeast

Asia. This is the Republic of Indonesia, one of the largest countries essentially to the very north of Australia. And Sulawesi itself is a very large island. It's the 11th largest island, in fact, on earth. The total land area of around about 174,000 square kilometres, which is a pretty decent size. And it's a very strangely shaped island. Some people have likened the shape of the island to a lowercase k. Others say it almost looks like a bit of an octopus or octopus shape or has a spidery sort of shape. It's a peculiar island that seems to have been formed initially by the collision of plate fragments from various continental plates and it's just bizarre i mean it's essentially like a it has

a mountainous core with a whole series of peninsulas and or arms radiating out and it's a very strange looking island so anyway it's got a long story short in the southwestern arm of this island is beautiful limestone tower cast environment known as Maros. And in Maros, we have, it's about a 450 kilometer square limestone cast region, you know, incredibly beautiful, quite close to the current coastline. And only about an hour's drive away from Makassar, which is the capital city of Sulawesi and one of the largest cities in Indonesia. And in the Maros Kast, we've got all these limestone hills and massifs that are just completely riddled from top to bottom and below the ground with networks of caves and rock shelters

that were inhabited by these early humans and in which we find today abundant rock art, including this cave art site that we've now dated to 45,500 years ago along with numerous other rock art sites that have also yielded evidence for cave paintings going back into the late Pleistocene, the Ice Age. Well we'll definitely get on to those other discoveries in this amazing part of the island from what you're saying there. I mean that's absolutely remarkable how close it is to this huge city. But as you say, then you have this amazing landscape not far away

with all this remarkable prehistoric remnants, shall we say. Yeah, look, it's kind of a blessing and a curse in one sense because logistically it's one of the easiest places I've ever had to do fieldwork in, in Indonesia. With my colleague here from Griffith University Professor Maxime Aubert our rock art dating specialist I've done field work with him in Kalimantan which is the northeastern part of the island of Borneo which is just to the west of Sulawesi and that is seriously remote field work I mean it's just nuts how I mean you

know getting to these cave art sites requires probably a week of solid trekking with the backpack and through the just in really really rugged mountainous karst terrain trekking through the jungle walking across logs you know that are spanning these rivers that if you fall off you're in serious trouble it's seriously hard going to get up to those cave art sites, whereas in Sulawesi and Makassar, you know, you get straight off the plane, you get in a taxi and you're there in an hour and you can just walk straight from the side of the road across a flat rice field

into some of the oldest cave art sites in the world and then come out and have a beer, you know. So it's bizarre. That's the blessing side of it, the logistical ease of working in that part of the world and having all of these world-class archaeology and rock art at your fingertips so to speak but the curse part of it is the fact that it is so close to these major urban centers and densely populated village areas which has led to this cast just from a commercial

perspective the limestone cast in this area is heavily mined by the mineral extraction industries for phosphates for cement production you know indonesia is i think one of the largest consumers of cement in the world and this obviously does enormous damage to the cast environment and to the archaeology as well and also unfortunately in some cases we get lots of graffiti and vandalism of the sites just from just being so close to where modern people live. But I guess that's always the way in archaeology, and I'm sure listeners would have far more horror stories

of this sort of thing and the impact it can have on sites. But look, it's an amazing part of the world. It's an amazing part of Indonesia. And to have access to this incredible archaeology and also to be able to do it in relative comfort. I mean, I can still entertain you with a few stories of scorpion stings and rats and all sorts of horrible things. But look, it's a real experience to be there. And it's probably the only reason we've been able to do so much research and not just do the rock art dating, but also excavate very deep inside some of these caves. One of the only reasons we're able to do this is because it is fairly close to civilization, if you like.

Well, let's go away then from the 21st century and these urban centres back to this amazing discovery. How did your team, you and your team, how did you stumble upon this cave painting? Well, this particular one, we've been working in Maros over a decade now, and especially since 2011, we've been surveying the limestone cast environment every season. We're usually there for about two or three months at a stretch each annual field season, exploring the area for more rock art sites, and local people also know what we're doing, so they will often come to us, to our two or three months at a stretch each annual field season, exploring the area for more rock art sites. And local people also know what we're doing. So they will often come to us, to our base camp,

and tell us about, oh yeah, you know, behind our village is a cave with this lukusan, as it's called in Bahasa Indonesia, the Indonesian language, art on the walls. So we're always looking for new rock art sites, both formally and informally. And on this one particular field season in 2017 our primary focus was on excavating one of the rock art sites to try to learn as much as we can about the ice age artists cave artists as much as we can about their lives from the archaeological

deposits themselves as well as also surveying the region for rock art and on that season on a one of the days off i wanted to go for a bit of a walk. So I walked up into a highland valley, which is just behind our base camp. There's a road that goes along. We'd passed through it before, and it's this very beautiful elevated valley. Sorry, I should mention that most of the rock art sites are down on the lowland plains. Okay, so this is a lowland tower cast environment. But as you go deep higher up into

the cast network you do find these sort of blind cast valleys which are you know what we refer to the highlands possibly they're not strictly from a geomorphological perspective but that's what they're known as locally there so i went up and explored one of these highlands and through these villages and i could see all of this really interesting cast environment i could see the potential it'd never been explored before by archaeologists and I could see all of this really interesting karst environment, and I could see the potential. It had never been explored before by archaeologists, and I could see some potential there, but we didn't have time. This was towards the end of the field season.

So I ended up organising for my right-hand man, if you like, an Indonesian archaeologist called Basrang Borhan, and he's now doing his PhD with me at Griffith University in Brisbane. But he's one of the best archaeologists I've ever worked with, worked with him now for over a decade. He hails from the Conjo-speaking community of southern Sulawesi, which is an ethnic minority group within the Makassar-speaking peoples. So he knows this area intimately, knows the archaeology very well,

very great guy. And I had him, after I'd returned to Australia, organise a field survey led by Basran of this valley that I'd seen during this brief recon. And while he was doing that, as it turns out, there wasn't anything of interest in that valley anyway that I initially had a look at, which is not unusual for me. But Basran being Basran, during that survey, met some local Bugis people, some of the local farmers from the village there, and they told him about this hidden valley

located kind of adjacent to the valley that they were in, and that was inhabited by quite a reclusive community of local people who were very, very isolated but were renowned for their incredible palm wine, which they would, think they it's a process of distillation actually from the heart of these palm trees they brew this drink called balok which is very powerful palm wine essentially and they were widely reputed for making the best balok in all of south silhuasi so anyway basran being led both by the desire for archaeological discovery and the desire for the best palm wine in the region, led the team into this valley, which is quite difficult to get to, and then just entered this spectacular, pristine valley, which is, yeah, it's just an amazing place. Once there, hooked up with this tiny little community and it was as simple as looking from the village headman's house

over to this cave, which was on the other side of the valley, walked over into it and there were these, as always in Indonesia, often the farmers used the front of these caves to store sacks of rice and timbers for their houses to keep them out of the rain. But they oftentimes don't always explore into the back of the cave often out of fear of spirits and ghosts and various other malevolent forces indonesia having a very vibrant ghost culture but basran explored into the back of this cave and there found this rock art scene that the locals had never noticed before or they claimed

that they'd never noticed it before and from from that initial discovery in December 2017, now we finally managed to publish it. So that's the story of how it was found initially. But I first saw the images when Bus Run WhatsApped them to me on my bloody handphone. So unfortunately, I didn't get to be there for that eureka moment. Adam, that's an amazing story. And let's not keep the suspense any longer. What does this new discovery, what does it show? Well, I'll start first with the image itself. For those of your listeners that have been following some of the stories about it, it's a cave painting on the rear wall of this limestone cave, which is known as Liang Tedonge. And Liang is the Indonesian word essentially for a hole or a cavity it was the

root word anyway for that and it's essentially means cave and tedong e which is very difficult to pronounce it's essentially the name of a local person anyway and in the back of this cave is this beautiful rock art scene which depicts three pigs three wild pigs and they're engaged in some sort of social interaction. It's not really very clear what's going on in this scene, but it really seems to be a single narrative composition. It's all painted essentially in the same shade of red ochreous pigment, and the pigs are quite beautifully illustrated. They're anatomically realistic in some senses, but quite stylized in terms of the manner of artistic depiction. These are not photorealistic representations of this particular species of wild pig, but there's a realism to them.

I think that was a strong part of the stylistic convention of the art. You can see that these are pigs. They're engaged in some sort of story going on behind this artwork. It's some sort of record of the social lives of these pigs, or at least the social lives as perceived by these ancient human artists. And we've dated it to at least 45,500 years ago, and we dated one of the pig figures, and we then infer that the rest of the scene is probably of a similar antiquity. And yeah, as we said at the beginning,

this seems to be the oldest known dated depiction of the animal world, as far as we can tell, anywhere in the world, which is pretty interesting to really sit back and think about that. Simple question, what kind of pigs are we talking about here? This is a species known as Sus celibensis. The common name is the Sulawesi warty pig or the Celebes warty pig. And they're an endemic species that we think evolved, well, current evidence suggests this species evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago on the island of Sulawesi. They're quite small-sized pigs.

The range is from around about 40 to 85 kilograms, which is pretty small actually for a pig. In fact, the Australian RSPCA, according to their guidelines, would rank this species of pig in the upper range of mini pigs, you know, the sort of pigs that you're allowed to keep and have sleep in your bed and all that sort of thing as pets. So you're allowed to keep a pig up to that size, anything above that, you know, you're facing some difficulties. But they were quite small little pigs and they're still found on the island. They're becoming more rare, certainly, because they're seen by local people as an agricultural pest and they will target them for eradication. But, yeah, they're still there.

And you also do find them, they were moved, as far as we can tell, this species was moved by prehistoric humans from Sulawesi to certain other islands in the wider region, which is a real mystery as to when and how and why that happened. And also they appear to be the only species of the Suwade, the only pig species in the world, apart from Susgrofa. You know, all the bacon sarnies you've ever eaten in your entire life and pork filled cumberland sausages come from a single species of pig sus grofa domesticated possibly independently in west asia and possibly in china around about the same time in the earliest

stages of the neolithic farming transition around about 10 000 years ago the eurasian wild boar suscropha the dominant the only domesticated species in the world except for this bizarre little endemic pig found on the island of sulawesi which in some of these other islands it was moved to has been documented as a fully domesticated village pig up until the 1970s which is very very, very unusual. It's the other domestic pig, which is, yeah, very strange. So anyway, but these are, we would assume, at this very early point in time, this was the wild ancestor of Susilabensis that these ancient Ice Age artists were depicting.

And yeah, I mean, this is almost all of the rock art depictions of animals that we see in Sulawesi. Well, over 80% are of this one species, which is really interesting. You know, these early Ice Age people were almost obsessed with this one species of pig, these warty pigs. They're called warty pigs because they have, well, warts on their faces. They have three sets of facial warts. And as they get older, especially the males, these warts become extremely pronounced. In fact, you can see that these artists also depicted these warts on the faces of these pigs

in the form of these pair of almost horn-like protrusions midway along the snout of the pig figures. So this was an important feature, I think, that they were quite keen to convey, these quite striking and quite repulsive looking facial warts that they develop i love them they're beautiful little pigs well i did a google search of the uh siloaceae pigs and yes yes lovely quite scarring though in there for the first impressions i must admit yeah well actually you probably the sustalabansis is quite it's a very understudied pig and i'm not sure the images you might have seen are of the barbier russa which is this the one with these huge big tusks that dominate the yes that's no

this is a different species that's its own genus essentially they're um that's a very different kettle of fish there yeah they are amazing those creatures they're we're not even really sure what their ancestral origins are but sussilabendis is very different and they're much more closely related to Suscrophia in fact but Barbarossa yeah they're still there on the island even rarer than Sucilabensis but they're the most striking looking animals you've just seen by the google searching but we have not found a single clear depiction of these animals these pigs in the rock art which is amazing considering they're just very distinctive looking. But yeah, for whatever it was, it's on this more mundane, if you like, other species of pig, which is rarely kept in zoos today and they're understudied.

And it's quite hard to find clear images, even through Google searching of Sucilabenzas. Most of the clear images now are probably from this ancient rock art depiction. la Benz's most of the clear images now are probably from this ancient rock art depiction you're listening to an episode of the ancients on down snow's history hit more after this land a viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive but to conquer whether

you're preparing for assassin's creed shadows or fascinated by history and great stories listen to echoes of history a ubisoft podcast brought to you by history hits there are new episodes every week douglas adams the genius behind theitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians.

Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Well, let's get back to this ancient rock art's depiction, because you mentioned that this is more than 45,000 years old, which is remarkable in itself. Adam, how were you able to date it? Well, first of all, I should say, as I'm sure you're aware, Tristan,

prehistoric rock art is very, very difficult to date. It's one of the most challenging of all archaeological features or remains or however you wish to categorise it to date. It's not found in an archaeological context. You're not excavating a coherent series of archaeological layers, finding this art in context and then being able to either directly date it or the surrounding sediments. It's there, it's just exposed on the walls of these caves or the ceilings of these caves. And for that reason, and oftentimes the actual, the pigment themselves, the pigments used to create the art,

it's not possible to reliably date them unless you're in the part of the world like Europe where the pigments themselves were created from charcoal, which obviously you can radiocarbon date. But we don't really, at least in the early rock art in Sulawesi, early people were not using charcoal. They were using mineral-based pigments, ochre, and you can't date that. But we're fortunate in this case because it's made in a limestone cast environment. We have calcium carbonate precipitation that has led to the development or the growth of these small calcite deposits

on top of the paintings what are known as coralloid speleothems or cave popcorn because these little mineral nodular crusts features that resemble there looks like someone stuck a bunch of popcorn onto the cave wall to me they look more like tiny little cauliflowers but it's i don't know cave cauliflower doesn't have the same sort of ring to it i suppose but look we're able to date these when they started to form using a method known as uranium series dating and i should stress from the beginning i'm the archaeologist not the rock art dating specialist so any attempt to grill me on exactly how the dating method works is not going to end well for me.

But yeah, it's essentially the method measures the radioactive decay of uranium and other elements within the calcite, which provides a way of dating when it started to form. And that then, because these calcite deposits formed on top of the art, provides us with a minimum age for the painting itself. It could be much older for all we know. All we really have in this case is a minimum age, which in the case of this rock art painting, again, is 45,500. And going on from that, you also mentioned earlier how it was painted, ochre. I mean, what do we know about this prehistoric paint? We're still at a preliminary stage of doing mineralogical analyses and

geochemical studies of the pigment itself. You know, we need to do more research on that. But based on the work we've done so far, including some unpublished research, which is under review at the moment, using PXRF and various other methods of analysis, it looks like, for the majority of cases, it looks like an ironstone hematite that they were using, essentially an iron-rich rock. And these ancient artists would have then taken this rock, don't know exactly where they were getting it from in the landscape, unlike in parts of Australia where we have Aboriginal people,

modern Aboriginal people still have knowledge and memories of where they got the ochre from originally in the recent past from these quarries ochre quarries in the landscape in south siloesi we have yet to find the source of this mineral pigment but it seems as though the most likely chain of events involved these early people getting hold of this iron rich rock crushing it up pulverizing it to produce this powder which they would then mix with water and possibly other liquids to create this paint. And then in the case of the early figurative depictions of animals, they were using, it looks like they were using some sort of brush then to apply the paint

directly to the wall, literally, you know, brush strokes to produce the imagery. Sometimes they might have used their finger to trace the images. And then in other cases, we see the hand stencils where they've sprayed a mouthful of paint around the hand to produce a negative impression of it. So we need to do more work to figure out where they're getting the pigment from, whether there were different sources, the extent to which trade and exchange networks were involved in procuring the pigments. There's a whole lot of work that was still at an early stage of you know it's still really in the pioneering stage and trying to nail down the age in the chronology and in future doing the more detailed specialist analyses that will provide

insight into these other very interesting components of this early world brilliant and let's put this discovery in a global perspective now. Let's have a look at some other examples from other parts of the world and how they compare European figurative cave art, the earliest European figurative cave art. What is the closest dating figurative cave art that we have from Europe compared to this latest discovery from Indonesia? Oh God, okay. So when we say cave art, we should distinguish between,

let's just say at this stage it means art that's made inside caves, just for purposes of simplifying our discussion. So then we have two types at least, in terms of the way archaeologists would recognise it. We have the parietal art, made on the walls and the ceilings of the caves or on other surfaces of rocks that are not mobile, large boulders, cliff faces, those sorts of places. This is what we tend to think of classically as rock art.

Then those forms of art, including everything from paintings to engravings to drawings to other sorts of markings that constitute images in our beliefs today. And then the other form being portable art, decorative elements of handheld tools, spear throwers, carvings on bone objects, non-utilitarian carvings or markings or patterns, down to the beautiful figurative art that we see engraved on bone surfaces and limestone tablet-like cobbles, which is a recurring feature of the upper paleolithic rock art in europe down to three-dimensional carved statuettes or three-dimensional figurines molded from fired clay like we see in parts of central europe as well at that early time so the portable art and

parietal art i guess were the two forms and in europe again you know this is from an outsider looking in from memory i think the earliest evidence of figurative art currently would be the famous lion man statuette i believe from germany which i believe has been dated to around about 40 000 years ago and this is a carving of a humanoid like figure with the head of a cave line. It measures about 30 centimetres in length and it's being crafted from a piece of mammoth ivory. Lots of arguments and lots of ink has been spilled trying to deduce the meaning of that particular object. But it, I think, and a range of other carved three-dimensional figurines,

again from the Aurignacian period in Germany, the culture associated with the first modern humans tend to that region. You're talking around about 40,000 years for the representational or figurative art in that region. I think there will definitely be some Paleolithic European archaeologists that could possibly contest that statement. But at least based on my understanding, that means that our, I mean, it's not a competition, you know, it doesn't matter. It makes us sound like, you know, this is not a game show. But if you want to look at it in terms of the current claims,

then yeah, the Sulawesi destroys anything you guys have from Europe. I mean, hey, Jackie. It seems to be at least a minimum age a little bit earlier. So yeah, to cut a long story short. Apologies. I asked that question because I was just wondering about the whole debate around the origins of cave arts, especially like for figurative cave arts, for the early humans. Does this really suggest the old age of this Sulawesi cave art? Does it

really suggest that cave art, it either came with the first humans that were coming down to Southeast Asia or that it originated from Africa? I think the evidence is for a long time has been building up and pointing to the argument that cave art traditions, the first figurative artworks originated in Upper Paleolithic Europe around about 40,000 years ago. This is an argument that's been around or a belief that's been around for a long time. You know this notion that something happened in these Ice Age caves of Europe that fundamentally changed humanity. Humanity emerged in Africa, but for whatever reason, well, there's a number of reasons. The incredible richness of the early archaeological record of Upper Paleolithic Europe,

the stunning artworks from Shore Valley Cave and innumerable other sites in that region, just some of the most sublime artworks ever produced by humanity, in my opinion. It's been seen as the place where true art evolved. And again, there's something happened in our minds that changed forever the intelligence and the cognitive ability of our species. And then presumably from that point in Europe spread like a bow wave throughout the rest of the world. This has been a view that's been held for a long time. But I think, yeah, more and more the evidence is now starting to point to, look, these abilities and this artistic culture more than likely emerged at an earlier point in the human journey. And whether that was in an adjacent part of the Eurasian continent, somewhere in Asia or possibly even, yeah, who knows,

down in Southeast Asia somewhere, Indonesia possibly. But, yeah, my money would be on somewhere in Africa where our species evolved and probably at a remote period in time, which if we ever found convincing evidence for it would come as a huge surprise to us. You never know. But I think that's the story, Tristan. But archaeology is about storytelling, but we need that evidence. And currently,

we just don't have it. But I would say that using images to tell stories is a very ancient part of who we are. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History,

a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. There are new episodes every week. the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Well, let's go back then to Southeast Asia. And before we really go on to the island of wherever audiobooks are sold. Well, let's go back then to Southeast Asia. And before we really go on to the island of Sulawesi and your other sites there and the discoveries that you guys have made,

the latest discovery in the design, in what it depicts, do we see any similarities with early cave art, figurative cave art that we have from, for instance, mainland Southeast Asia or from Australia? With mainland, you know, if we look at what we have in Sulawesi and if we cast our direction to the west, to the mainland, the rock art is not as well documented there so far as what we find in

Indonesia. And when I say Indonesia, most of the rock art sites known from Indonesia are really from the eastern part of the archipelago. There's a handful, I don't know if you can try to imagine the geography of Indonesia, but to the very west you have the large islands of Sumatra and Java. And these islands have only yielded very limited numbers of cave art sites, very, very limited. But then when we go further east and roughly in the centre of the archipelago we get to Sulawesi quite a lot of rock art now appearing and then into some of the eastern islands on the way over to Papua more and more rock art sites appearing so we've got relatively rich concentrations of rock art in the eastern part of Indonesia at this stage that are emerging

and sorry more from Borneo as well from the jungles in northeast Borneo. But then it becomes a whole different story once you get to Australia. It's been said before that Australia probably has the richest concentrations of rock art in the world. It's just there is a lot of rock art in Australia, in particular in the two major rock art provinces in northern Australia, of the Kimberley region in northwest Australia and the Kakadu and Arnhem Land regions in the top end, as it's called. And this is huge amounts of rock art there, okay? So look, going back to mainland Southeast Asia, we can't really say at this stage. The evidence is, in my opinion,

the evidence is not there in sufficient abundance to be able to make any meaningful comparisons. But then when we look at the very well studied rock art, the immense record of rock art in Northern Australia, in the Kimberley and Arnhem Land, we do find what seems to be based on studies of superimposition and various other relative methods of rock art dating, there does seem to be a very early phase in those sandstone rock shelters in Arnhem Land and Kakadu that does seem to resemble superficially at least the style of animal, figurative animal representation that we see that we've now dated to the Ice Age in Sulawesi and also in Borneo. These are depictions of animals that are typically they're large animals, large mammals or marsupials in the case of the

Australian rock art focus on kangaroos, macropods and they're always shown in side profile with an outline most of the anatomical detail occurring in the outline of the animal and then that outline of the animal shown in side profile is infilled usually not with realistic anatomical detail, but sort of almost a random pattern, irregular pattern of lines and dashes, which is quite a distinctive way of depicting these animals. So we do see that these possible links between the earliest known dated depictions of animals in Southeast Asia, or Indonesia at least,

and what we do have in Northern Australia, but at this stage, this early phase of rock art in Australia, the age of it has not been nailed down. So it could just be that these are superficial similarities that don't have any real meaning beyond the stories we like to tell about it ourselves. But it is possible. I mean, why not? It's a reasonable hypothesis that the first modern humans to disperse from mainland Asia through the islands of Wallasea and all the way to Australia at least 65,000 years ago it's not unreasonable to argue that they brought this rock art tradition with them and you know we're finding traces of it on some of the islands in Indonesia and and then we're seeing how it evolved down to the recent past in Australia it's possible

yeah I find that possible prehistoric connectivity and you see the evolution that you can see from the rock art absolutely astonishing in its own right but Adam let's go focusing in then on Sulawesi and this part of the island because as you have said during this interview this is the latest discovery but you and your team and the people on the island do you have found lots of examples of very early dating rock art from this part of the world? Yes, yes, lots. I mean, we first published the Pleistocene Ages, the very first Pleistocene dates for rock art back in 2014.

And there we showed that image of a human hand dated to at least 40,000 years ago and an animal painting was at least I think 35,000. Then in 2019 we published this discovery and dating of this spectacular rock art scene from the same region which seems to depict this prehistoric hunt conducted by these tiny little figures which seem to be part human part animal. These hybrid human animal like figures hunting these siloase warty pigs once again as well as a species of endemic dwarf buffalo the anoa also found in siloase incredible little creatures about a meter tall so this was this incredible hunting scene which we again using the same method dated to at least 44 000 years years ago. And that, we believe, could be the earliest depiction of a supernatural being.

You know, the earliest evidence that we have for the ability for people to imagine things that don't exist. These Therianthropes, these human figures with animal heads, it was a really interesting find. So that's 44,000 years old. And we have this new cave-up discovery we've just published and we've got i wouldn't say we've got a lot of samples because it's very difficult there's a lot of rock art

there but it's only in very rare circumstances we will find one of these little calcite growths forming over the top of a painting and that calcite growth then being of sufficient quality for dating but we do have other samples that we've collected which were in the process of dating now and we just never can be sure how much older some of this rock art can be and not you know it's not always just a matter of striving for the older dates it's also trying to figure out how this culture changed over time how this artistic culture changed over time are we dealing with in situ evolution of a artistic output of a single human population? Were there subsequent waves of people coming in, bringing new rock art styles?

You know, are we seeing this right now? We've just got these isolated dates, which really highlight the global importance of this rock art. But yeah, big question now is trying to figure out what was going on in this world. And to me, it's, yeah, this world and to me it's yeah this is one of the most fascinating things i mean look i really want to try to unlock the mystery of who these people were we still haven't found any fossils from any of these people we assume that they were closely related to the first australians but we're yet to find any skeletal remains of these ice age cave artists we've been excavating some of their sites so we understand a little bit more about other aspects

of their culture and technology and economy, but really they remain a mystery to us and we need to do a lot more work to get to the depth and the richness of knowledge that archaeologists have for Upper Paleolithic people in Europe, that's for sure. And these examples of cave art that we found in Suluasi, you mentioned there, from all these isolated cases, do we get an idea as the ones that you've been able to date that do we see the art evolving in certain ways? Do we see different things being depicted as time

goes on? We don't have that temporal dimension yet. I mean, we do, of course, but in terms of that span of dates, which, you know which would enable us to say, okay, at roughly 40,000 years ago, we can see what their artistic culture and their iconography was at that point. We can see what it was like. And then when we move forward through time, another 5,000 years or another 10,000 or 20,000 years to around about the time of the last glacial maximum, oh yeah, we can see they started focusing on

different types of animals or there were major changes in the manner of depiction of animal art and so forth we just don't have that yet tristan the key is we really need to try to find to try to establish more tightly bracketed minimum and maximum ages for individual artworks as i said before most of the time we've only been able to obtain minimum ages based on dating the calcite growths that developed over the top of the rock art. So all we can say, for example, is, oh, that rock art is at least 45,000 years old, but it could be 65,000 years old for all we know. But what we really need is these more tightly constrained minimum

and maximum ages, which can only be obtained currently, and we've only established, I think, one or two samples where one of these little popcorn growths began to form on the cave wall. Then the artists came along, painted their artwork over the top of that little mineral growth, and then that growth continued to form so that when you sample the calcite growth the little popcorn and saw it in half you can look at all the little layers of calcite starting at the cave wall surface itself the canvas on which these people made the art and then you can see some of that calcite mineral there some of the layers and then you can see the pigment layer on top and then on top of the pigment you can see where the calcite continued to form until

eventually it stopped developing so they're in only very rare circumstances we can date below the pigment and above the pigment get a maximum and a minimum age but that was a hand stencil i think so unfortunately we haven't got that yet for a animal depiction. I think, you know, it's just a matter of continuing the research and hoping we get lucky and always trying to keep in mind that we can be negative about it and say, oh, you know, I wish we'd had insight into this or that. But really, we're quite fortunate even to be where we are at this stage. Without knowledge, it's very rare in the world. There's only a handful of places in the world where you can do this uranium series dating on rock art in an accurate way. Sulawesi, Spain, I struggle to think of the

other locations. I think Russia maybe, but Spain and Sulawesi so far are the two key parts of the world that have yielded this relatively large number of dates. Well, that brings me on to the next thing. Why, of all places, why Sulawesi do we see such a rich concentration of rock art that we've been able to find from sometimes as much as 45,000 years ago? I think going back, it's a number of things. First of all, there's just the ease, as I said before. Like it's relatively easy to do research logistically in that area. So we've been able to cover a lot more ground and find a lot more sites

with a smaller amount of investment of time and energy and money, frankly, than in other parts of this region, such as Kelimantan. I wouldn't want to do the calculations, but for every one new rock art site we find in Borneo, you're talking another 20 you could find in the same time and with the same investment of money in Sulawesi it's just this is chalk and cheese in terms of just the pragmatic aspects of doing field work in Indonesia so there's that it's proximity to a major capital city and so forth and also this was I think it was a you could be looking at higher population levels higher population density it was a very rich environment, this lowland forests surrounding this karst area, which would have been teeming with animal life.

We find almost every single cave site just has huge numbers of stone artefacts scattered all over the surfaces. It may well have been a densely populated place where just by nature a lot of rock art was being made. And again, just flukes of preservation whatever it is about this particular region like i should mention that a lot of the rock art sites and if your listeners have seen some of the images we published in our paper on this new cave art site you will see how much of the cave art has actually eroded away as due to

exfoliation of the limestone cave wall on which it was created it's disappearing at a very alarming rate and in every single cave art site we've found so far in Sulawesi we're seeing this phenomenon occurring it's not sure exactly what causes it but the cave wall itself just flakes away and takes the rock art with it obliterates whatever you know had been painted on that cave wall and I think this is happening in a lot of areas in the karst areas in Indonesia. So it could be that a lot of the early rock art has not survived on some of these other islands. Or it could be something about humans crossing the Wallace Line, this major biogeographical

boundary separating the world of Asia from the world of Australia. Could be that something about life in Sulawesi again led to higher population levels or it changed the way people were making rock art and they started making more of it. These are very simple answers to, well, it's a very simple question you asked, but it's deceptively complex, that's for sure. And we've got so few of the details in our hands at this stage that I really can't do anything but venture these speculations. Absolutely. And I'm always wary of that when I'm asking these questions

because this is so far away in the past and there's so much speculation around it from these discoveries that it's always difficult to give any concrete answers for these questions. I read these reports of in Spain, they're still finding these rock art sites. You know, there's a spectacular one that was announced I saw only quite recently. This is in Spain where the first Ice Age cave art was properly recognised and they're still finding rock art even in very, very well explored places

in France and Spain that have been subject to generations of research by archaeologists. Chauvet Cave, for example, in the mid-90s. But boy, just imagine how much more is out there waiting to be discovered in places like Sulawesi. That's going to be the next thing to finish it all off. I mean, Adam, from all that you've been saying, it sounds very exciting for the future for your team,

for this team of real-life Indiana Joneses, for finding more amazing rock art, which will tell us more about this time in prehistory. Yeah, hopefully. There's much to look forward to in the future, Tristan. more amazing rock art which will tell us more about this time in prehistory yeah hopefully there's much to look forward to in the future tristan we just need to get past this what will soon be a distant memory of not being able to go out into the field but look you know if we can get past this and reconnect with our colleagues in indonesia again and get back in a business there's a lot of exploration and discovery waiting to be done. Well, best of luck with that. Keep in touch because I can't wait to hear more about it in the future.

Adam, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show and at such short notice. Mate, it was a pleasure. Thank you, Tristan. And yeah, stay safe over there. Hi, everybody. Just a quick message at the end of this podcast. I'm currently sheltering in a small windswept building on a piece of rock in the Bristol Channel called Lundy. I'm here to make a podcast.

I'm here enduring weather that frankly is apocalyptic. Because I want to get some great podcast material for you guys. In return, I've got a little tiny favour to ask. If you could go to wherever you get your podcasts, if you could give it a five-star rating, if you could share it, if you could give it a review, I'd really appreciate that. Then from the comfort of your own homes, you'll be doing me a massive favour. Then more people will listen to the podcast, we can do more and more ambitious things, and I can spend more of my time getting pummeled. Thank you. more and more ambitious things and I can spend more of my time getting pummeled. Thank you. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,

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