What started out as a sense of wonder at the beauty of Sulawesi’s cave paintings and their age – up to 45,500 years old – has snowballed into an obsession to document all those I could find information on.
Along the way I found out a lot about an extremely beautiful country, I knew very little about: Indonesia.
This post looks at three areas of Sulawesi: Maros Regency, The Pangkajene and Islands Regency (Indonesian: Kabupaten Pangkajene dan Kepulauan, usually shortened to Pangkep) and Bone Regency.
In total I explore 131 sites via short ‘cave biographies’ uploaded to Google, MyMaps – click on any site on the map at the bottom of this page to see images and read information about each unique site.
As a taster, here are three photographs, one from each Regency that give a flavour of the awesome, artwork which the ancient people of Indonesia have produced. There are deliberately, no cave names with these pictures – I encourage to explore and find them for yourself!
Somewhere in a cave in South Sulawesi..
Somewhere else in a cave in South Sulawesi..
Lastly, also somewhere else in South Sulawesi.
Gua Prasejarah Sulawesi Selatan
Berawal dari rasa takjub akan keindahan lukisan gua Sulawesi dan usianya – hingga 45.500 tahun – kini menjadi obsesi untuk mendokumentasikan semua informasi yang bisa saya temukan.
Sepanjang jalan saya menemukan banyak tentang negara yang sangat indah, saya tahu sedikit tentang: Indonesia.
Posting ini melihat tiga wilayah Sulawesi: Kabupaten Maros, Kabupaten Pangkajene dan Kepulauan (Bahasa Indonesia: Kabupaten Pangkajene dan Kepulauan, biasanya disingkat menjadi Pangkep) dan Kabupaten Bone.
Total saya menjelajahi 131 situs melalui 'biografi gua' singkat yang diunggah ke Google, MyMaps – klik situs mana pun di peta di bagian bawah halaman ini untuk melihat gambar dan membaca informasi tentang setiap situs unik.
Sebagai pencicip, inilah tiga foto, satu dari masing-masing Kabupaten yang memberikan cita rasa kehebatan karya seni bangsa Indonesia zaman dahulu. Ada sengaja, tidak ada nama gua dengan gambar-gambar ini – saya mendorong untuk menjelajahi dan menemukannya sendiri!
Dear Neil. You have done an excellent work by gathering all this info and uploading it to the map!
ReplyDeleteAfter some “exploration”, mainly based in what you have published, I managed to locate right two of the three paintings, but have my doubts about the other;
First Image: Anoa, plus stencils of hands located near its head and fore limbs; is surely from Leang Uhallie (Bone Regency)
Second Image: Anoa painted in red, plus stencil of hands near its hind limbs; is surely from Leang Sumpang Bita.
Third image : Apparently a fish; It´s more difficult to locate… perhaps from Leang Tagari ( Pangkep Regency), whose artwork has a great percentage of fish motifs…??
These ancient cultural manifestation are awesome…and if we take into account that the dating method utilized ( TH/U on encrusted carbonates) can only yield “minimum ages”, the underlying question of; …¿How long before 43.9 Ka (*) has humans been expressing themselves in this way?, is indeed open to amazing speculations…
What we do know by sure, is that ancient H sapiens (at least, in other regions) knew about pigments since long before. An unquestionable example of this last is some sort of “tool kit” for artwork, found at Blombos Cave, South Africa, at 100Ka geological layers, including a shellfish valve utilized as a container, partially filled with a mixture of ochre, charcoal and bone, and qwartzite slabs in close association (presumably used for grinding these materials…)
So , if Sulawesi sites still have undisturbed geological record beyond 50 ka, I think It should not be unreasonable to expect that further excavations on them, could lead to discover even more ancient signs (perhaps not necessarily more paintings, most probably tools and materials…) pointing to art work…
Amazing post!
Best regards
Marcelo
(*) From your post at 05/30/2022; A TH/U age obtained by Aubert et al.2019 on a painting of a hunting scene at Leang Bulu Sipong IV.