At https://www.sciencenews.org/article/south-american-patagonia-cave-paintings-surprisingly-old … Patagonian cave paintings may have helped transmit cultural information from around 8200 years ago. Patagonia straddles down the eastern side of South America, a province of Argentina. People appear to have started cave painting around 8200 years ago. Left unmentioned is the catastrophic episode dated 6200-6000BC which resulted in changing sea levels – including in South America. They look like designs that continued to be painted over the next 3000 years, during what is known as the Mid Holocene Warm Period, and appear to have ceased around 3000BC -coinciding with the Piora Oscillation, another unexplained catastrophic event.
The research is published in Science Advances, February 14th 2024. The paintings cover the walls and ceiling of the cave – preserving cultural knowledge over the generations that existed beween 6200 and 3000BC. The cave lies about 1000 metres above present day sea level in NW Patgonia. Paint pigments provided the dates. There are around 895 different designs composed of geometric shapes, cross shaped lines, figures of what look like humans, and llamas known as guana. Actual bones of guana have been found in the cave, and dated as old as 11,700 years ago, at the beginning of the Holocene. Yet, there is no sign of hunting activity in the designs. What then do they portray?
At https://www.sciencenews.org/article/oldest-known-cave-painting-art-pig-found-indonesia … one of the oldest known cave paintings comes from Suluwesi in Indonesia. A painting of a local wild pig – a warty pig. It has been dated 45,000 years ago. Other pieces of cave art are thought to go back as late as 70,000 years ago – but this is only because modern humans are thought to have arrived at that point in time. These dates are achieved via radioactuve uranium decay rates on minimal growth that formed in this layer over and underneath the cave art.