Context: Recently, the researchers in the online peer-reviewed open access journal ‘Scientific Reports’ have reported that world’s oldest cave art are weathering at an alarming rate due to climate change.
Key Points

• The researchers studied flakes of rock that have begun to detach from cave surfaces to find that salts in three of the samples comprise calcium sulphate and sodium chloride.
• The artwork made with pigments was decaying due to a process known as haloclasty.
• It is triggered by the growth of salt crystals due to repeated changes in temperature and humidity, caused by alternating wet and dry weather in the region.
• Indonesia has also experienced several natural disasters in recent years, which have quickened the process of deterioration.
• The extreme patterns of increased seasonal moisture from monsoonal rains and worsening droughts are accelerating rock art deterioration.

World’s Oldest Cave Art

• It is a Pleistocene-era rock paintings dating back to 45,000-20,000 years ago.
• It is located in cave sites in southern Sulawesi, on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
• The limestone cave walls are adorned with hand stencils of red and mulberry tint, in addition to paintings of native mammals and human-animal hybrids.

Significance of the cave paintings

• A team of Australian and Indonesian archaeological scientists, conservation specialists, and heritage managers examined 11 caves and rock-shelters in the Maros-Pangkep region in Sulawesi.
• The artwork in the area includes what is believed to be the world’s oldest hand stencil created by pressing the hand on a cave wall, and spraying wet red-mulberry pigments over it.
• A nearby cave features the world’s oldest depiction of an animal, a warty pig painted on the wall 45,500 years ago.
• The cave art of Sulawesi is much older than the prehistoric cave art of Europe.