ANCIENT SPACE DRAWINGS FULL

Who were the first “people,” who saw and interpreted the world as we do? Studies of genes and fossils agree that Homo sapiens evolved in Africa 200,000 years ago. Sulawesi’s rock art was first discovered in the 1950s. Hidden away in a damp cave on the “other” side of the world, this curly-tailed creature is our closest link yet to the moment when the human mind, with its unique capacity for imagination and symbolism, switched on. They smash our most common ideas about the origins of art and force us to embrace a far richer picture of how and where our species first awoke. The findings made headlines around the world when Aubert and his colleagues announced them in late 2014, and the implications are revolutionary.

It’s among more than a dozen other dated cave paintings on Sulawesi that now rival the earliest cave art in Spain and France, long believed to be the oldest on earth. That likely makes it the oldest-known example of figurative art anywhere in the world-the world’s very first picture.

He found that it is staggeringly ancient: at least 35,400 years old. This ghostly babirusa has been known to locals for decades, but it wasn’t until Aubert, a geochemist and archaeologist, used a technique he developed to date the painting that its importance was revealed. “Look, there’s a line to represent the ground,” he says. Aubert points out its neatly sketched features in admiration. Then my eyes focus and the lines coalesce into a figure, an animal with a large, bulbous body, stick legs and a diminutive head: a babirusa, or pig-deer, once common in these valleys. Just visible on darkened grayish rock is a seemingly abstract pattern of red lines. My companion, Maxime Aubert, directs me to a narrow semicircular alcove, like the apse of a cathedral, and I crane my neck to a spot near the ceiling a few feet above my head. Though faded, they are stark and evocative, a thrilling message from the distant past. Scattered on the walls are stencils, human hands outlined against a background of red paint. But its modest appearance can’t diminish my excitement: I know this place is host to something magical, something I’ve traveled nearly 8,000 miles to see. The cave is cramped and awkward, and rocks crowd into the space, giving the feeling that it might close up at any moment. Inside, the usual sounds of everyday life here-cows, roosters, passing motorbikes-are barely audible through the insistent chirping of insects and birds. We approach the nearest karst undeterred by a group of large black macaques that screech at us from trees high on the cliff and climb a bamboo ladder through ferns to a cave called Leang Timpuseng. We’re on the island of Sulawesi, in Indonesia, an hour’s drive north of the bustling port of Makassar.

ANCIENT SPACE DRAWINGS FULL

Rivers have eroded the landscape over millions of years, leaving behind a flat plain interrupted by these bizarre towers, called karsts, which are full of holes, channels and interconnecting caves carved by water seeping through the rock. In the distance, steep limestone hills rise from the ground, perhaps 400 feet tall, the remains of an ancient coral reef. The stalks, almost ready to harvest, ripple in the breeze, giving the valley the appearance of a shimmering green sea. I struggle to keep my footing on a narrow ridge of earth snaking between flooded fields of rice.

Ancient space drawings