In Cave in Borneo Jungle, Scientists Find Oldest Figurative Painting in the World

"It’s hard to say when people first began to make these cave drawings, but one intriguing clue comes from a hand stencil. A flowstone atop it is 23,600 years old, while another underneath is 51,800 years old.

Combining the evidence from this stencil and the banteng image, it’s possible that people started making art in the Borneo caves sometime between 52,000 years ago and 40,000 years ago.

The new discovery indicates that people in Borneo were already making figurative images at the same time as people in Europe — or perhaps even thousands of years beforehand.

Now Dr. Aubert and other researchers are puzzling over what triggered these bursts of creativity."

READ THE NEWSTORY BY CARL ZIMMER