January
22
/ 2026
A faint hand stencil hidden on a cave wall in Indonesia has been dated to at least 67,800 years old—potentially making it the oldest known cave art yet studied. The discovery comes from a limestone cave called Liang Metanduno on Muna Island, in south-eastern Sulawesi, where researchers say the handprint was made by spraying pigment around a hand pressed to the rock, leaving a “negative” outline. The new age estimate, reported in a paper in Nature, is based on dating mineral crusts that formed on top of the artwork—meaning the stencil itself must be at least that old, and could be older. If confirmed, it edges past previously reported minimum ages for some of the world’s earliest known cave wall
