A scene of humans hunting a pig painted in an Indonesian cave is oldest known narrative art

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Up a rocky cliff face, through a narrow opening, and at the end of a snaking passage lies a painting that archaeologists say is the world’s oldest known example of storytelling in art history.

Located inside the limestone cave of Leang Karampuang in the Maros Pangkep region of South Sulawesi, the picture portrays three humanlike figures interacting with a wild pig.

The painting, made with a red pigment, is at least 51,200 years old, according to a study published Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature.

It’s the latest prehistoric art to be found in the area’s intriguing limestone caves. The same study redated a scene of part human, part animal figures hunting warty pigs and dwarf buffaloes, first described in 2019, determining it was at least 48,000 years old. Three warty pigs painted on a cave wall that some of the same researchers reported on in 2021 was previously the world’s oldest depiction of an animal — at 45,500 years old.

The paintings are older than Europe’s famed cave art such as Lascaux in France, and, while younger than some geometric abstract art found in South Africa, it’s the oldest of a narrative scene, the authors of the study said.

“We, as humans, define ourselves as a species that tells stories, and these are the oldest evidence of us doing that,” said study author Maxime Aubert, a professor at Griffith University’s Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research in Australia, via email.

The painter or painters are “conveying more information about images than just individual static images. They are telling us how to look at them in