Cave paintings change ideas about the origin of art (BBC, Nature)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News

The artworks are in a rural area on the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi.

Until now, paintings this old had been confirmed in caves only in Western Europe.

Researchers tell the journal Nature that the Indonesian discovery transforms ideas about how humans first developed the ability to produce art.

Australian and Indonesian scientists have dated layers of stalactite-like growths that have formed over coloured outlines of human hands.

Early artists made them by carefully blowing paint around hands that were pressed tightly against the cave walls and ceilings. The oldest is at least 40,000 years old.
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more: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29415716
http://www.nature.com/news/world-s-oldest-art-found-in-indonesian-cave-1.16100



Lots of large pix and video at the links !

[Scuba]

1. K&R

[packman]

2. Damn Caveman graffiti

all over the place.

[Ichingcarpenter]

3. 'To put things into perspective''

https://twitter.com/TheTweetOfGod/status/519989773297938432

[Enthusiast]

4. +1

[Thor_MN]

5. The only old paintings preserved are in caves.

I imagine that rock outcrops everywhere were painted long before someone decided to go into a cave and paint there.

Their roadside billboards have all weathered away.

[Orsino]

6. I suspect that art is partly a function of civilization and population density...

...and could well believe that it would boom in widely-separated regions more or less simultaneously.