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Cave paintings change ideas about the origin of art
"This find enables us to get away from this Euro-centric view of a creative explosion that was special to Europe”--Prof Chris Stringer
Natural History Museum
BBC News - Science
8 October 2014
Cave paintings change ideas about the origin of art
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News
...The artworks are in a rural area on the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi...
...There are also human figures, and pictures of wild hoofed animals that are found only on the island. Dr Maxime Aubert, of Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, who dated the paintings found in Maros in Southern Sulawesi, explained that one of them (shown immediately below) was probably the earliest of its type.
"The minimum age for (the outline of the hand) is 39,900 years old, which makes it the oldest hand stencil in the world," said Dr Aubert.
"Next to it is a pig that has a minimum age of 35,400 years old, and this is one of the oldest figurative depictions in the world, if not the oldest one," he told BBC News.... MORE at http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29415716
There are several photos of the art at the link provided.