Ancient cave painting discovered in Indonesia

Scientists find old pig painting - 25th January 2021

Cave paintings are very old pictures. They are many thousands of years old. We find them inside mountains. In Indonesia, scientists found a very old cave painting. It is a picture of an animal: a pig. The painting is 45,500 years old.

The picture is 136cm long and 56cm tall. This is life sized. The picture shows a male pig. Someone painted the picture with red ochre. Ochre is like paint.

Scientists found the painting in a cave on Sulawesi: an Indonesian island.

Maxime Aubert is one of the scientists. He studied the painting. He found out the painting's age. And he talked about the painters of the picture. He said: "They were just like us." They could paint any picture.

People made this painting 45,500 years ago. But the painting is not the only old picture. In 2018, scientists found an old picture in South Africa. The picture is 73,000 years old.