A faded hand stencil that is dated at least 67,800 years old is highlighted by a colour palette chart held by an archaeologist during an expedition at the Liang Metanduno cave on Muna Island, Southeast Sulawesi, in May 2019. - Courtesy of Maxime Aubert This article was published in thejakartapost.com with the title "". Click to read: https://www.thejakartapost.com/indonesia/2026/01/23/govt-to-protect-worlds-oldest-rock-art-site-in-sulawesi.html?utm_source=(direct)&utm_medium=channel_indonesia. Download The Jakarta Post app for easier and faster news access: Android: http://bit.ly/tjp-android iOS: http://bit.ly/tjp-ios
JAKARTA: The government has pledged to protect archaeological sites in Southeast Sulawesi, especially a cave on Muna Island where the world’s oldest rock art was discovered amid mounting concerns over environmental and tourism-related damage.
In a study published on Wednesday (Jan 21) in Nature, an archaeological research team discovered a hand stencil at the Liang Metanduno cave on Muna Island possibly made some 67,800 years ago, a conclusion taken following a laser-ablation uranium series analysis on the calcium carbonate deposit on top of the artwork.
The result makes the hand stencil the world’s oldest to be dated so far, even older than a cave painting of a pig in Maros Pangkep karst cave in South Sulawesi, which was dated at around 51,200 years old.
Culture Minister Fadli Zon welcomed the study, calling it a milestone in Indonesia’s cultural and scientific history.
“This is wonderful news. It proves that cultural expression has existed here since at least 67,800 years ago,” the minister said at a press briefing in Jakarta on Thursday.
He emphasised the government’s commitment to safeguarding the site, including by upgrading its status from a provincial cultural heritage site to a nationally protected one to allow for stronger intervention.
In the Nature study, the researchers noted that the stencil was in a “poor state of conservation”, with the pigment having faded.
“The most urgent step is ensuring the site doesn’t suffer from any damage, whether from human activity or natural factors,” Fadli said.
“According to researchers, the cave is easily accessible, and many people have touched its interior surfaces.”
Finding balance Local authorities warned that protecting the site would require the government to take immediate steps to address infrastructural challenges.
At a separate press briefing held by the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) in Jakarta on Thursday, Muna Culture Agency head Hadi Wahyudi said many caves around the island remain unfenced and are not monitored around the clock due to limited personnel and resources.
“The caves on our islands are not fenced in yet, while they should be. We also have many caretakers of the sites, but their homes are quite far from the locations. And they aren’t there 24/7,” Hadi said on the sidelines of the BRIN press briefing.
“Like museums, these sites could serve as historical tourism objects, but if they don’t have the right infrastructure and [tourism] would further harm them, then they should be closed,” he added.
BRIN archeologist Adhi Agus Oktaviana, a co-author of the Nature study on the Muna rock art, also warned that dust from activities at nearby small-scale limestone mines could threaten the cave and ancient artworks inside.
Minister Fadli said the government would proceed cautiously in balancing preservation and utilisation of the cave, acknowledging that climate change also posed long-term risks to karst landscapes.
“We will probably see suggestions from researchers and experts, including from the cultural preservation expert team, on what we need to do,” Fadli said, “but we will certainly make this an important narrative for the early history of civilization, as well as for historical, cultural and natural tourism in that area.”
While the minimum age of the rock art is what catches the attention of most people, the significance of the ancient artwork extends beyond its age, according to researchers involved in the study.
Archaeologist Maxime Aubert from Griffith University, who co-led the Muna Island study, said at the BRIN press briefing the hand stencil discovered by the team was nearly twice as old as the oldest rock art found in Europe, dated at around 35,000 years old.
The Muna Island hand stencil was attributed to Homo sapiens based on the “added technical and stylistic complexity” of the artwork.
According to the study’s researchers, the tip of one finger appears to have been artificially narrowed, either through the additional application of pigment or by moving the hand when the artist painted the cave wall.
BRIN’s Adhi said the hand stencil demonstrated that early modern humans who once lived on the archipelago “already had the cognitive capacity to draw”.
But other scholars have questioned whether the hand stencils in the region were really made by Homo sapiens. Some researchers argue their age makes it more possible for the rock art to have been made by Denisovans, an archaic human subspecies that lived across Asia during the Middle to Late Pleistocene some 200,000 to 32,000 years ago.
But Adhi still backed the study’s attribution of the rock art to Homo sapiens.
“We believe these paintings were made by modern humans, considering the ones who migrated to Australia were Papuan and Aboriginal populations,” he said, “although we remain open to future findings.” - The Jakarta Post/ANN
