The rock painting of a pig was made about 45.5 thousand years ago.
On the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, scientists have discovered the oldest known images of an animal.
The size of the drawing is 136 cm by 54 cm. It depicts a warthog pig. The image is painted using dark red ochre pigment. The pig has a short comb of upright hair and several horn-shaped facial warts, which are characteristic of maturing males of this breed.
There are two handprints above the hindquarters of the pig, and it appears to be looking at the other two pigs itself, which have only partially survived. That is, the drawing depicts some kind of scene, a narrative.
“The pig seems to be watching a fight or social interaction between two other warthogs,” said co-author Adam Bramm.
Humans have hunted warthogs for tens of thousands of years, and they are a key subject of prehistoric artwork from the region, especially during the Ice Age.
Ober, a dating expert, identified a deposit of calcite that had formed on the surface of the painting and then used uranium isotope dating to say with certainty that the deposit was 45,500 years old.
“The people who did this were completely modern, they were just like us, they had all the capabilities and tools to paint whatever painting they liked,” he added.