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This 45,500-year-old pig painting is the world’s oldest animal art
The depiction of a warty pig adds to the mounting number of cave art finds throughout Indonesia.
Some 45,500 years ago, on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, ancient humans ventured into a cave and sketched out the rotund form of a native pig, complete with a bristly back and face warts. Archaeologists now believe this portly swine marks the oldest drawing of a creature yet discovered anywhere in the world.
In a study published this week in Science Advances, an image of the drawing shows the animal apparently looking at two other pigs mid-squabble. The outlines of two human hands are positioned near the rump of the pig, and a bristly patch in the center of the mix might hint at a fourth creature.
The painting, made with strokes of red ocher on the interior cave walls, was