The oldest hunting scene ever discovered dates back 43,900 years. It represents human figures with animal heads next to pigs and buffaloes, was discovered in a cave in Indonesia and is described in the journal Nature by the Australian Griffith University group led by archaeologists Maxime Aubert and Adam Brumm.
In the painting there are eight very stylized figures hunting with spears and ropes, partly human and partly animal (teriantropi), next to those of two pigs and four dwarf buffaloes belonging to species that still live in the forests of the island of Sulawesi , where the cave is located.
Detail of the hunting scene painted 43,900 years ago (source: Ratno Sardi / Griffith University)
"The hunters were represented with the heads of birds, reptiles and other fauna species of Sulawesi," notes one of the authors of the research, Adhi Agus Oktaviana. All the figures were painted in the same style and using the same dark red pigment.
It is also the oldest scene in which human and animal figures interact; the oldest of the kind previously discovered were made in Europe in the period between 21,000 and 14,000 years ago. According to the researchers, the way in which hunters are represented could also be the oldest proof of man's ability to imagine the existence of supernatural beings.
"These images could be the first proof of our ability to conceive things that do not exist in the natural world, a concept that is the basis of modern religion," notes Brumm. "The teriantropi - he adds - are present in the folklore or in the narrative of almost all modern societies and are perceived as ancestral beings in many religions all over the world. Sulawesi hosts the most ancient image of this type, prior to the Lion Man of Hohlenstein Stadel, in Germany, a statue depicting a man with a lion's head made 40,000 years ago and considered the oldest so far ".