Humanity’s Oldest “Business Card”: This Human Handprint Is Nearly 68,000 Years Old

The World’s Oldest Rock Art

The extraordinary discovery took place in Liang Metanduno cave on Muna Island, located off the coast of Sulawesi, Indonesia. On the cave’s limestone walls, researchers identified several faint hand stencils. A prehistoric creator produced these markings by pressing their hand against the rock and spraying a mixture of ochre and water over it, leaving behind a distinct outline. Notably, the human handprint that captured the researchers’ attention features uniquely elongated and tapered fingers, resembling claws.

It looked almost as if they were deliberately trying to transform the image of a human hand into something else—perhaps an animal claw,

– says Adam Brumm, an archaeologist at Griffith University.

Similar “claw-like” prints were already known from Sulawesi, but experts previously believed them to be much younger.

How Old Is the World’s Earliest Human Handprint?

To estimate the age of the Muna Island markings, scientists employed advanced laser-ablation uranium-thorium dating. This method allowed them to determine the age of the mineral layers covering the art rather than the pigment itself. Using this technique, researchers estimated the human handprint to be at least 67,800 years old.

This date makes the Indonesian stencil approximately 1,100 years older than the famous Neanderthal handprint in Spain, which previously held the title of the world’s oldest reliably dated rock art. Furthermore, researchers discovered another human handprint in the same cave that proved to be at least 35,000 years younger. This suggests that humans returned to the same site to create rock art across many distant epochs.

Did Art Begin Outside Europe?

The Muna discovery proves that the ability to create abstract, symbolic imagery developed in Homo sapiens long before they reached Europe. For decades, the prevailing theory suggested that the oldest rock art originated in Europe.

When I was at university in the late 1990s, we were taught that the explosion of human creativity occurred in a small part of Europe. We are now seeing modern human behavioral traits, including narrative art, in Indonesia, which makes that Eurocentric argument increasingly difficult to defend,

– emphasizes Adam Brumm in an interview with the BBC.

Who Left the Handprint in the Cave?

Brumm suggests that the artists intended to depict something more than a simple limb, and the stencil may provide evidence of a symbolic relationship with the animal world.

These markings held some deeper cultural meaning, though we do not know what it was. I suspect it involved the complex symbolic relationship between these ancient peoples and the animal kingdom,

– Brumm states.

However, it remains possible that the artist modified the print by accident. Furthermore, scientists cannot definitively exclude other species. While many researchers suspect Homo sapiens performed the modification intentionally, they also consider other candidates.

Professor Paul Pettitt of Durham University argues that it remains unclear whether the sharpened fingers were intentional or simply the result of the artist’s hand slipping. In his view, identifying the author remains a challenge.

Why should this behavior be limited to Homo sapiens, and why couldn’t other potential species, such as the little-known Denisovans, have created this?

– asks Professor Pettitt.

Read this article in Polish: Najstarsza „wizytówka” człowieka. Ten odcisk dłoni ma prawie 68 tys. lat