A beautiful painting of a kangaroo has been discovered in a cave in Australia. The painting testifies to early human communication and is believed to be more than 17,000 years old.
Researchers have, in collaboration with Indigenous Australians, found a number of really old cave paintings depicting various animals. A snake, a lizard and several marsupials are painted, among other things. The painting of a kangaroo turned out to be the oldest.
Paintings like this are often difficult to date, as it can be difficult to find organic material in the pigment, which is necessary to use the so-called carbon-14 method.
But the researchers was lucky and was able to find remains of several ancient wasp nests both below and above the cave painting pigments. By determining the age of the wasp nest, one could then see that the painting must have arrived there at least 17,000 years ago.
According to the researchers, this means that the kangaroo is Australia’s oldest known cave painting.
Source: Damien Finch et al, 2021. Ages for Australia’s oldest rock paintings. Nature Human Behavior. 10.1038 / s41562-020-01041-0