Art on the move

摘要

The Maros karst in Sulawesi, Indonesia, is a limestone area with many caves and a large body of rock art. This art was first reported in the 1950s, and it was long assumed to be less than 10,000 years old, because it was thought that rapid erosion rates in a tropical karst environment would prevent the survival of older cave paintings. In this issue, Aubert et al.(page 223) actually date some of that art, and report that it is one of the oldest examples of cave art in the world. This spectacular finding suggests that the making of images on cave walls was already a widely shared practice 40,000 years ago.