Oldest painting - non-figurative art

The earliest-known non-figurative cave art is a stencilled hand dated to at least 67,800 years ago, during the Late Pleistocene era, which was one of several Palaeolithic artworks discovered in the Liang Metanduno cave on Muna Island in south-east Sulawesi, Indonesia. One of the fingers in the stencilled hand appears to have been narrowed by the artist to create a more claw-like shape. Details of the discovery were published in the journal Nature on 21 January 2026.

A team of archaeologists, including Adhi Agus Oktaviana of Indonesia’s National Agency for Research and Innovation, have been studying and dating prehistoric cave art in Sulawesi since 2011. The group, which also included Renaud Joannes-Boyau (of Southern Cross University, Australia), Maxime Aubert and Adam Brumm (both of Griffith University, Australia) among others, used a recently developed technique known as laser-ablation uranium-series dating to establish the age of these stencils. This method involves collecting and analysing small samples from the calcium-carbonate deposits (informally known as “cave popcorn”) that form on top of the pigments used to create the original artworks, which tend to have become obscured over the millennia.

This stencil is some 16,000 years older than the oldest figurative rock art, which also was found in Sulawesi and is estimated to be at least 51,200 years old. That scene depicts a wild pig interacting with a group of at least three human-like figures. These artworks were discovered in 2017 and form part of a ceiling panel in the Leang Karampuang cave in the Maros-Pangkep region, as described in a paper published in Nature on 3 July 2024.

Other examples of non-figurative “traced” or “stencilled” Palaeolithic art have been documented elsewhere. Prior to this most recent discovery, often cited as the most ancient stencilled art was a hand stencil – possibly made by a Neanderthal – found in the Maltravieso Cave in Cáceres, Spain. This image is dated to at least 66,000 years of age by uranium-thorium analysis, as theorized in Science on 23 February 2018.

Meanwhile, a loose rock found in Blombos Cave in South Africa bearing red ochre cross-hatch lines has been dated to c. 73,000 years old and perhaps as much as 90,000 years old and may represent the oldest-known human-made markings or abstract patterns, as reported in Nature on 4 October 2018.