World's Oldest Animal Drawing, Discovered in Borneo Cave, Is a Weird Cow Beast

A 40,000-year-old painting of a mysterious, wild cow-like beast discovered in a Borneo cave is the oldest human-made drawing of an animal on record, a new study finds. The discovery indicates that figurative cave art — one of the most significant innovations in human culture — didn't begin in Europe as many scientists thought, but rather in Southeast Asia during the last ice age, the researchers said. Drawing animals, an accomplishment in itself, may have been a gateway for illustrating other aspects of the human experience, including hunting and dance. "Initially, humans made figurative painting of large animals and they later start depicting the human world," said study co-lead researcher Maxime Aubert, an archaeologist and geochemist at Griffith University in Australia. The ancient artwork covers the walls of secluded limestone caves in the rugged and remote mountains of the East Kalimantan province of Indonesian Borneo. Researchers have known about these human-made drawings since 1994, but they didn't know when the illustrations were created until now, said Aubert, who worked with Indonesia's National Research Centre for Archaeology (ARKENAS) and the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB)...MORE