Recently Discovered Cave Paintings May Be World’s Oldest Figurative Artworks

The archaeologist Hamrullah may have discovered the world’s earliest narrative and figurative artwork in the Maros-Pangkep limestone cave system of Sulawesi, an Indonesian island. According to the New York Times, the painting, which depicts eight figures approaching wild pigs, dates back some 44,000 years, and a scientific paper published this week reports that the work is “the oldest pictorial record of storytelling and the earliest figurative artwork in the world.” Hamrullah,