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A team of researchers has found prehistoric cave images in Maros, South Sulawesi, that it says were drawn almost 40,000 years ago.

In the form of 12 human hand stencils and two figurative animals, one image resembles a babirusa (pig-deer). The paintings are comparable to the oldest cave painting found in the El Castillo cave, northern Spain.

The research team, consisting of several archeologists led by Maxime Aubert and Adam Brumm of Griffith University, Queensland, Australia, found one of the hand stencils on the cave wall in Maros was drawn at least 39,900 years ago, one of the oldest cave paintings in the world. They have detailed their findings in the international science journal Nature, which was published on Thursday.

Your comments:

Not mentioned in the article, and which should be of some concern (perhaps), is that the beautiful limestone karst region is being used as the source material for several large cement makers.

Let'€™s hope they survey the regions about to be turned into neo-brutalist architecture before something truly priceless is lost.

John Elliott

Those who painted the caves 40,000 years ago have since been swept away by Malay immigrants. Malay immigrants nowadays pursue their expansion in West Papua.

The Malay culture has been taken over. So we see a succession of cultures and people in our region. I would not say that the current dominant trend (Islam) is an improvement on the artists who painted hands and pigs on the walls of caves in South Sulawesi.

Jan Karl

Indonesia is on the right track toward true humanity. It does not buy what these people call '€œ21st century humanity'€.

Tahu

The writer of this article is too nationalistic.

Can you conclude that after reading the article there was no Indonesia 40,000 years ago?

Jaytee