These Ancient Cave Paintings Could Be Forever Lost to Climate Change, Study Says

Climate change threatens to erase some of the world’s oldest cave art dating back 45,000 years, according to an alarming new study that shows the priceless works peeling off the wall.

The findings, which were published in Scientific Reports last week, covered 11 limestone caves with Pleistocene rock art on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. There are drawings of animals as well as the oldest known hand stencil in the world.

But in recent decades extreme weather patterns and rising temperatures are causing some of these links to our ancient past to flake away because of the formation of salt crystals, according to the team of researchers from Indonesia and Australia’s Griffith University.

Lead study author Jillian Huntley said on Griffith University’s news website that the ancient rock art is “disappearing before our eyes” and that the degradation is set to worsen as global temperatures rise.

“Our research is another example of the wide ranging and pervasive impacts of climate change,” Huntley, from the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, told VICE World News in a separate interview over email.

“We need to act without delay to minimise global warming. Like other climate induced events (such as coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef), the increase in stone decay across the equatorial zone is of a scale that a global response is the best chance we have to help preserve the rock art.”

The different wall paintings in the area are between 20,000 and 45,000 years old, according to the study. One that was discovered in 2017 is a reddish life-sized painting of a short-legged pig. The hefty animal appears to be interacting or fighting with two smaller pigs, whose images are difficult to see because of decay.

Huntley said that while tackling problems caused by climate change is a global undertaking, conservation work needs more resources.

“We need to document the rock art in high-resolution and fine detail so that we have a record,” she told VICE World News.

In terms of historical importance, the collection of paintings in Sulawesi “rivals” the more famous ice-age cave art in Western Europe, the study said. There are more than 300 caves or shelters in the region that contain similar drawings. 

“Cave art discoveries are revealing more and more about how advanced the cultural lives of the first peoples living in Sulawesi were,” researcher Basran Burhan, an archaeologist from Sulawesi, was quoted as saying on the Griffith University website.

“Detailed paintings of animals, hand stencils and narrative scenes of great antiquity show that people have been connected to this place for tens of thousands of years.”

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