The oldest known animal drawing is in a remote Indonesian cave

The sketch is at least 40,000 years old, slightly older than similar animal paint found in the famous caves in France and Spain. A few years ago, experts thought that Europe was where our ancestors began to pull animals and other figures.

But the drawing age in the magazine is Wednesday Nature, as well as previous discoveries in Southeast Asia, show that a figurative drawing appeared on both continents at the same time.

It is known that in remote limestone caves Borneo has been prehistoric drawings since the 90s. To reach them, Aberts and his team used the maze to destroy the thick jungle in the green corner of the island.

By fastening mineral helmets to illuminate the darkness, they walked and searched for caves decorated with hundreds of ancient designs, thousands of miles, looking for artwork that might have been dated. They needed to find specific minerals in the drawings to determine their age with technology that measures the collapse of the uranium element.

"Most of the paintings we really can not read," said Aubert.

Aberta and colleagues in 2014 reported the art of Sulawesi Caves, a neighboring Indonesian island. They were dated by hand, forming a red color through the tube, to describe the hand pressed against the stone, described almost 40,000 years ago.

Now, with Borneo's cave art, scientists are able to build a rough schedule of how art is developed in this area. In addition to the bulls, which are about 5 feet (1.5 meters) wide, they are dated with red and purple hand-held stencils and cave paintings of human scenes.

Following large-scale animal drawings and stencils: "It seems that attention is being directed towards showing the world of people," said Aberts.

Approximately 14,000 years ago, beer settlers began to regularly outline human figures by doing things like dancing and hunting, often wearing large headdresses. A similar transition in handicraft subjects took place in European caves.

"It's very cool, from a human point of view," said Peter Veth, an archeologist at the Western Australian University who was not involved in the study. "People adopted similar strategies in different environments as they became more modern."

The island of Borneo was still connected to mainland Southeast Asia, when the first figurative drawings were made some 40,000 years ago, which also applies to the time when the first modern people arrived in Europe. The earlier animal drawings in the French Chauvet cave date back from 33,500 to 37,000 years.

The question of whether the young people who migrate from Africa created their circus painting skills with them or the art of it later is still unclear. Scientists have only partially recorded the world of stone art. Africa's earliest beer portraits are found in Africa, and include abstract designs such as cross-links dating back some 73,000 years ago.

The next Indonesian research phase includes excavations to find out more about the people who made these paintings. Some places with human bones, prehistoric jewelry and small animal remains have already been identified.

As for the red bull, its meaning remains a mystery.

"We think they did not just have food, that meant something special," Aubert said.

Continue research:
Asian cave paintings challenge Europe as an art assistant