Oldest cave-art hand stencil pushes wall-art timeline back
Oldest cave-art hand stencil is now the phrase attached to a faded red hand outline in a limestone cave on Muna Island, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia—because researchers report it is at least 67,800 years old. If the dating holds (and the method is designed to produce a conservative “minimum age”), the find resets the current benchmark for cave-wall art and adds new weight to the idea that symbolic culture was already well established in Ice Age Wallacea during early human dispersals toward Sahul (Australia–New Guinea).
The artwork was found in Liang Metanduno, a limestone cave site where negative hand stencils were made by placing a hand against the wall and blowing pigment around it, leaving a silhouette-like outline. The oldest example is in poor condition—only a patch remains—but the remnant still preserves negative impressions of fingers and part of the palm.
What researchers found at Liang Metanduno
The key motif is a hand stencil that survives as a small, faded area of sprayed pigment. Researchers describe it as roughly hand-sized and fragmentary, with visible impressions of several fingers. A notable feature is that at least one finger tip appears to have been intentionally altered—either by extra pigment application or by moving the hand during spraying—creating a narrowed or pointed appearance. Nearby, better-preserved stencils of a similar style suggest this was not a one-off experiment, but part of a broader stencil-making tradition in the region.
On the same panel and at nearby sites, the team also documented later art executed in different pigments and styles. Some images appear much fresher and were painted on surfaces exposed by exfoliation of older wall layers—an important detail, because it shows the cave walls have a complex history in which older art can be partially erased or buried by later mineral growth.
How the 67,800-year minimum age was determined
The age is not derived from the pigment itself. Instead, researchers dated calcium carbonate mineral deposits (calcite and related cave minerals) that formed on top of the artwork after it was made. Because these deposits must be younger than the paint they cover, they provide a minimum age for the stencil.
In this case, the team used uranium-series dating on the overlying mineral layers, including a laser-ablation approach designed to map isotopic ratios across thin sections of the calcite. The oldest reported minimum age for the Liang Metanduno stencil is 67.8 thousand years, with the paper also reporting another very old hand stencil from the same cave with a minimum age of 60.9 thousand years. The “at least” framing is crucial: the art could be older, but the method supports a floor, not a ceiling.
Why this is a big deal (and what it does not prove)
It strengthens the case for early symbolic culture in Wallacea
Hand stencils are simple to describe, but they are not accidental marks. Producing a crisp negative outline requires a deliberate technique—preparing pigment, positioning the hand, and controlling the spray. The new minimum age pushes this practice far deeper into the Late Pleistocene than many readers will associate with cave-wall art.
Just as importantly, it supports a broader point: Sulawesi and its satellite islands are not a peripheral footnote in Ice Age culture. Instead, they appear to have hosted long-running traditions of parietal art, with this study adding Southeast Sulawesi data to a research record that, until recently, was heavily concentrated in the Maros-Pangkep karst region in Southwest Sulawesi.
It is strong evidence of very early humans in the region—but not a signed name tag
The stencil is described as the oldest minimum-age constraint for parietal art that can be attributed to our species, but the study also acknowledges a hard limit: there is no direct way to identify which human group made the stencil solely from the image and mineral crust.
Sulawesi’s deep-time human story includes archaic hominins in the broader region, and the timing of overlap between groups is still debated. The researchers argue for Homo sapiens based on contextual timing and the technical/stylistic features (including the apparently modified fingertips), but they cannot “prove the artist” the way a DNA sample might.
That nuance matters. The finding is a major chronological marker for cave-wall art, but it does not settle every question about who, exactly, held the hand to the wall.
What it changes for migration stories toward Sahul
The location is part of the punchline.
Wallacea sits between mainland Asia (Sunda) and the Sahul landmass. Any movement into Sahul required sea crossings and island-hopping, and researchers have long modeled multiple possible routes. The Liang Metanduno cave art is described as the easternmost dated Pleistocene cave art reported so far from Island Southeast Asia, and it aligns with a northern corridor that runs through parts of present-day Borneo and Sulawesi toward Papua.
This matters because archaeological evidence along the middle of these modeled pathways is often sparse compared to the “end points” (parts of mainland Asia and Australia). A securely dated cultural trace in Southeast Sulawesi helps narrow the gap between those end points, suggesting that the movement of people through the region was not just feasible, but culturally productive.
In plain terms: the new minimum age indicates that by the time humans were plausibly moving toward Sahul, they were not merely surviving—they were making durable symbolic marks on cave walls.
A fragile record, exposed to modern pressures
Cave-wall art is unusually vulnerable: mineral growth can obscure it, water can wash it, and rock surfaces can exfoliate. But beyond natural processes, Southeast Sulawesi and nearby islands face accelerating land-use and industrial pressures, including extractive activity in parts of the wider region. Even when the art is located in caves, the surrounding landscape can determine whether sites stay intact, accessible for documentation, and protected.
The irony is sharp: the older the art, the more it depends on a thin, lucky chain of preservation—and the more quickly that chain can be broken by short-term activity at the surface.
What comes next
This discovery is unlikely to be the last word. By design, the new dates invite two follow-ups.
First, more fieldwork: Southeast Sulawesi has been comparatively under-investigated, and the study reports dozens of recorded sites, suggesting the region contains far more imagery than the single “world’s oldest” stencil that made headlines.
Second, more dating: uranium-series constraints work best when mineral layers cooperate. Expanding the dataset across multiple caves and multiple motifs will help researchers see whether Liang Metanduno is an extraordinary outlier—or the first securely dated point on a much longer, older sequence of Ice Age wall art across the northern route to Sahul.
If that sequence exists, the consequence is not just a new record-holder. It would mean the story of early symbolic expression—and the cultural baggage humans carried during ocean crossings—may need to be told with Indonesia, not Europe, as one of the central stages.