The oldest form of creative expression is parietal art, or rock art—paintings and petroglyphs on cliff faces and in caverns.
Paleolithic rock art exemplifies our early ancestors’ growing capacity for symbolic thought, and can be found on every continent except Antarctica.
More than 52 rock art sites are located within 60 miles of one another, in a remote, mountainous area of Borneo, a Southeast Asian island.
Among these sites is the earliest known painted cave, Lubang Jeriji Saléh.
Before archaeologists chemically dated the artworks in 2018, the oldest cave paintings were thought to be in Europe.
Lubang Jeriji Saléh features a great horned bovine creature with what looks like a spear stuck in its side, painted directly overhead on the ceiling of the cave.
The choice of subject matter indicates that archaic humans attached tremendous and possibly even religious value to the act of hunting and to the creatures they hunted.
Such decorated caves may have played a special role in the lives of our early ancestors, as centers of ritual—places to celebrate successful kills and revere the animals that died.
