Climate change is destroying the world’s oldest cave art

Scientists have warned that environmental degradation is killing one of the oldest and most precious pieces of the world’s human heritage.

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Researchers writing in the online peer-reviewed open access journal ‘Scientific Reports’, published by Nature Research, have reported that Pleistocene-era rock paintings dating back to 45,000-20,000 years ago in cave sites in southern Sulawesi, on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, are weathering at an alarming rate.

A team of Australian and Indonesian archaeological scientists, conservation specialists, and heritage managers examined 11 caves and rock-shelters in the Maros-Pangkep region in Sulawesi.

The artwork in the area includes what is believed to be the world’s oldest hand stencil (almost 40,000 years ago), created by pressing the hand on a cave wall, and spraying wet red-mulberry pigments over it.

A nearby cave features the world’s oldest depiction of an animal, a warty pig painted on the wall 45,500 years ago.

The cave art of Sulawesi is much older than the prehistoric cave art of Europe.