Climate Change Will Soon Erase Ancient Cave Art Of Sulawesi, Indonesia

Conny Waters - AncientPages.com - Some of the world's earliest rock art located at the  Maros-Pangkep site in Sulawesi, Indonesia, is rapidly disappearing due to climate change.

Rock art dates back to at least 44,000 years ago that are believed to be the oldest surviving artistic hunting scenes and supernatural beings.

Credit: Basran Burhan

Griffith University-led research by a team of Australian and Indonesian researchers revealed evidence for salt crystallization (haloclasty) on Pleistocene-aged rock art panels at 11 limestone cave sites in Maros-Pangkep that include hundreds of caves with stalactites and stalagmites.

In these caves, archeologists found prehistoric stone tools and rock paintings. The latter includes a 39,900 years old hand stencil and the recently discovered world's oldest animal cave painting - a life-size Celebes warty pig - dating back to 45,500 years ago.

“Measuring 136 by 54 centimeters (53 by 21 inches) the Sulawesi warty pig was painted using dark red ochre pigment and has a short crest of upright hair, as well as a pair of horn-like facial warts characteristic of adult males of the species.

Study lead, Dr. Jillian Huntley from the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, specializes in rock art conservation. Her research scientifically describes the properties of rock art and the caves or rock shelter environments where it survives today.

Unlike the temperate climates where famous European ice age cave art sites such as Altamira and Lascaux are found, the ancient Indonesian paintings are located in the tropics, the most atmospherically dynamic region on the planet. The mid-latitudes act as the heat engine for global climate cycles, and global warming can be up to three times higher in the tropics as a result.

Dated pig painting at Leang Tedongnge. Maxime Aubert Credit: Maxime Aubert

Dr Huntley said high temperatures and more consecutive dry days were combining with the retention of monsoonal rains in rice fields and aquaculture ponds to provide ideal conditions for stone decay.

“Our analyses show that haloclasty is not only chemically weakening the cave surfaces, the growth of salt crystals behind ancient rock art is causing it to flake off the walls – it is disappearing before our eyes,” she said and added that "degradation of this incredible rock art is set to worsen the higher global temperatures climb.”

"Preserving this art for future generations requires the cooperation and long-term commitment of scientific research institutions, cultural heritage agencies, government authorities, and local communities. It also requires us to educate people in Indonesia – and throughout the world – about the urgent need to study and safeguard this irreplaceable evidence of past human civilization.”

“We have recorded over 300 cave art sites in Maros-Pangkep. Our teams continue to survey the area, finding new artworks every year. Almost without exception, the paintings are exfoliating and in advanced stages of decay. We are in a race against time,” Adhi Agus Oktaviana, an Indonesian rock art expert with ARKENAS and Griffith Ph.D. scholar, said.

The caves in the Maros-Pangkep karst are situated in South Sulawesi, Indonesia, and contain paintings from the paleolithic considered to be the earliest figurative art in the world, dated to at least 43,900 years ago. source

Rustan Lebe, a BPCB archaeologist based in Maros-Pangkep, coordinates an emerging program of rock art and microclimate monitoring in the region. According to Rustan “we have recorded rapid loss of hand-sized spall flakes from these ancient art panels over a single season (less than five months)”.

“Apart from studying how the salts are forming on the cave walls, it is important to consider the analysis of rock art pigment composition and image production techniques, which could possibly provide insight into why some individual motifs exfoliate more quickly than others.”

See also: More Archaeology News

“Cave art discoveries are revealing more and more about how advanced the cultural lives of the first peoples living in Sulawesi were. Detailed paintings of animals, hand stencils and narrative scenes of great antiquity show that people have been connected to this place for tens of thousands of years,” he said in a press release.

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Written by Conny Waters - AncientPages.com Staff Writer