Laser-induced imaging of radioactive elements was used to work out the age of an ancient cave painting on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. The results reveal that the narrative scene is 51,200 years old, making it the earliest known example of representational art. This study challenges previous dating methods and suggests a deeper origin for human image-making and storytelling.
TL;DR or if you don’t have access to the article: the researchers invented a faster, less-destructive and more-accurate rock art dating method & applied it to humanity’s oldest known rock art in Sulawesi, Indonesia. The art is at least 51,200 years old (authors’ lower estimate)!
Edit: contrary to what the news title original stated: this is the oldest representational art, not the literal oldest human-created art.
The paper itself (open access): https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07541-7
Well the problem is we know very little. So a movie like that would be complete guesswork.
You might enjoy the youtube channel “Stephan Milo” though. His videos are well sourced and have a lot of expert interviews. And he focuses on this kind of stuff.