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Ancient cave art on two continents is about the same age (1030 L)By?Los Angeles Times, adapted by Newsela staff10.14.14This undated photo provided by the journal Nature shows stencils of hands in a cave in Indonesia. Ancient cavedrawings in Indonesia are as old as famous prehistoric art in Europe, according to a new study that shows our ancestors were drawing all over the world?40,000 years ago. Photo:?AP Photo/Kinez Riza, NatureArchaeologists say prehistoric cave paintings in Indonesia were created nearly?40,000 years ago.Their great age suggests that Europe can no longer claim to be the sole birthplace of art.The images of hands and animals were reported in limestone caves on the island of Sulawesi just east of Borneo, by Dutch archaeologists in the 1950s. They had never been dated until now. For decades researchers thought the cave art was made during the pre-Neolithic period, about 10,000 years ago. Now, it's clear they were painted about the same time as the earliest known art found in the caves of northern Spain and France.The findings were published this week in the journal Science.Rock Art Dating“We now have 40,000-year-old rock art in Spain and Sulawesi,” said Adam Brumm. He is a research fellow at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia, and one of the lead authors of the study. He said he expects more cave paintings to be found in other places that are as old, if not older.“I can say that it was a great — and very nice — surprise to read their findings,” said Wil Roebroeks, an archaeologist from Leiden University in the Netherlands. Roebroeks was not involved in the study. “‘Wow!’ was my initial reaction to the paper,” he said.The researchers said they had no idea how old the rock art was when they started on the project about three years ago. They just wanted to know the date for sure.To do that, the team relied on a relatively new way of dating called U-series dating. The method was also used to establish the age of rock art in Western Europe.Hand Tracings And AnimalsFirst they looked for painted images that had small, white, cauliflower-like growths covering them. Eventually, they found 14 of them, including 12 outlines of hands and two drawings of animals.The white growths — called cave popcorn — are made of minerals that are left behind by thin streams of water that run down the walls of a cave. These mineral deposits also have small traces of the radioactive element uranium in them. Uranium breaks down over time at a set rate to produce another radioactive element called thorium.“The ratio between the two elements acts as a kind of geological clock to date" the deposits, explained Maxime Aubert. He is an expert on dating cave paintings at the University of Wollongong in Australia’s New South Wales state.Using a tool with a diamond blade, Aubert cut into the cave popcorn. He then removed small samples that included some of the color from the cave paintings. A paint sample would be at least as old as the first layer of mineral deposit that grew on top of it.Using this method, the researchers determined that one of the hand outlines was made at least 39,900 years ago. A painting of an animal called a pig deer was at least 35,400 years old.Taking Art To New LandsIn Europe, the oldest known cave painting was of a red disk found in a cave in El Castillo, Spain. Ancient humans painted it at least 40,800 years ago. The earliest painting of an animal, a rhinoceros, was found in the Chauvet Cave in France. It dates back 38,827 years.Archaeologists have two theories of how humans came to make art at roughly the same time on different continents.Each group may have come up with idea of cave art at the same time, although independently of each other. More interesting, however, is the possibility that art was already part of an even earlier human culture. These two groups brought the art know-how with them as they migrated to new lands.The study clearly disproves the theory that humans in Europe were only ones making art 40,000 years ago.Roebroeks said that the old "Europe, the birthplace of art" story was too simplistic to be true. “We have seen a lot of surprises in paleoanthropology over the last 10 years, but this one is among my favorites.” ................
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