World's Oldest Figurative Art: The Sulawesi Warty Pig Painting

The Sulawesi warty pig painting, discovered in the Leang Tedongnge cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, is a profound testament to prehistoric art. Dated to approximately 45,500 years ago, it stands as one of the oldest known examples of figurative art in the world. This remarkable painting depicts a Sulawesi warty pig (Sus celebensis), a species endemic to the island, noted for its unique facial warts and bristly hair.

Unearthed in 2017 by a collaborative team of archaeologists from Australia and Indonesia, the painting was created using red ochre pigment. It features the pig in profile, with a short crest of upright hairs and distinctive horn-like facial warts, showcasing remarkable detail and precision. This level of artistry suggests that the Sulawesi warty pig held significant symbolic or spiritual importance for the ancient humans who painted it, potentially reflecting their relationship with the natural world or their reliance on the species for sustenance.

The Leang Tedongnge cave is part of a broader network of limestone karst caves in Sulawesi, which collectively house an extensive array of prehistoric art. These include numerous depictions of animals, as well as hand stencils created by blowing pigment over hands pressed against the rock. Such imagery offers invaluable insights into the lives, beliefs, and environments of early human societies in the region. The discovery of these works also challenges the long-held notion that sophisticated artistic expression was exclusive to early European cultures, highlighting the global emergence of complex symbolic behavior among Homo sapiens.

Scientific analysis of the painting employed uranium-series dating techniques on calcite deposits overlaying the artwork, ensuring accurate age estimation. This method has further corroborated the ancient origin of other artworks in the region, reinforcing Sulawesi’s significance in the study of human prehistory.

The Sulawesi warty pig painting underscores the cultural richness of Southeast Asia’s prehistoric past and emphasizes the critical need for conservation. The region’s limestone caves face threats from natural erosion, climate change, and human activities, such as quarrying and agricultural expansion. Preserving these archaeological treasures is imperative for future generations, as they offer a tangible connection to humanity’s earliest artistic and symbolic endeavors.
World's Oldest Figurative Art: The Sulawesi Warty Pig Painting

Symbolisms of colors in ancient Egypt

The symbolism and use of color in ancient Egypt provided a template for later connotations concerning nature and design. Color itself bestowed individuality to symbol and image.

Artisans began to observe the natural occurrence of colors in their surroundings and pulverized various oxides and other materials to develop the hues they desired.

Egyptians were clothed in white, contrasting starkly with the colorful garments of foreigners. White is also the color of joy and celebration.

The crown of Upper Egypt was white. Red was the symbol of chaos, called "typhonic" after the Greek god Typhoon, whom Greek identified with Seth.

Black used to represented ebony, emmer wheat, cattle, hair, eyes, Nubians. In tombs black color was used to represent mascara. The color also symbolized the underworld, the dead, Osiris, fertility, the heart, Anubis and the Ibis.

The coloring always related to characteristics of the persons represented. In classical Egyptian art male bodies were painted in strong brown colors, while women received a lighter, yellowish shade of color.

Men received an orange color only when age and frailty were to be represented.
Symbolisms of colors in ancient Egypt

Ancient Etruscan painting

Etruscan tomb painting spans nearly five hundred years, from the second quarter of the seventh century to the turn from the third to the second century BC.

It was largely decorative and sepulchral in motive, and was employed in the painting of tombs, and upon vases and other objects placed in the tombs. It had a native way of expressing itself, which at first was neither Greek nor Oriental, and yet a reminder of both.

Technically it was not well done. Ancient paintings ar Ardea, in Etruria and at Lanuvium still retained, in the time of Pliny all their primitive freshness. According to Pliny, paintings of a still earlier date were to be seen at Caere, another Etruscan city. Before 500 B.C. it was almost childish in the drawing. After that date the figures were better, though short and squat. Those on the vases usually show outline drawing filled in with dull browns and yellows.

Etruscan tomb painting, especially the painted hypogea of the coastal metropolis Tarquinia are unquestionably among the most important and expressive remains of Etruscan culture and they have excited the imaginations of experts and other Etruscan enthusiast over the centuries.

Finally there was a mingling of Etruscan with Greek elements, and an imitation of Greek methods. It was at best a hybrid art, but of some importance from an archæological point of view.
Ancient Etruscan painting

The origin of Pre-historic arts

Humankind seems to have originated in Africa in the very remote past. They beings have been walking upright for millions of years, however it was not until 25000 years ago that they invented art.

During the last glacial epoch, when hunter gatherers were still living in caves, the Neanderthal tool-making mentality gave way to the Cro-Magnon urge to make images.

The earliest preserved art objects date to around 30,000 BC, during the Old Stone Age, or Paleolithic period, Paleolithic artworks are of an astonishing variety.

The first art objects were the symbols of animals and people had supernatural significance and magic power.

The most striking works of Paleolithic are the images of animals incised, painted or sculptured on the rock surfaces of caves.

Most early discoveries of prehistoric art came about accidently as missionary, scholars or explorers traveled around, reporting on anything of interest which they encountered.

It seems to have been the Chinese who were the pioneers. The earliest known written reports of rock art are to be found in Han Fei Zi, written about 2,300 years ago by Han Fei.
The origin of Pre-historic arts

Cro-Magnon paintings

Cro-Magnon was a member of the same species of Homo sapiens as present day man.  Evidence form skeleton remains, tools and weapons show the he was a hunter and fisherman of skill that he lived in caves and huts.

Over the period of 20,000 years, Cro-Magnon artists in Europe worked to produce galleries of art that still astonish modern people. The European paintings are found deep an inside cave is what is modern Spain and France.

The oldest known cave, Grotte de Chauvet is among the most spectacular of all Cro-Magnon painted caves.

It was painted 33,000 years ago and exhibited as advanced an artistic capacity as any of the later caves.

The artists who painted its wall had a sophisticated understanding of perspective and other artistic principles, so much so that the experts first assumed that the paintings were executed less than eighteen thousands years ago, during what was then thought to be the heyday of Cro-Magnon art.

The most frequently painted subjects were animals, pictures in browns, reds, yellows, and blacks for pigments available to the Stone Age artists.

The animals were the games for which Cro-Magnon hunters looked: reindeer, bison, cattle, deer and horses. Many of the animals depicted, such as bison and rhinoceroses, have been extinct in Western Europe for many thousands of years.
Cro-Magnon paintings

The history of cave painting

The first ‘paintings’ were probably made in caves approximately 15,000 year ago.

Most of the cave painting that has been preserved seems to be attributed to the later millennia of the Upper Paleolithic.

These pictures of bison, deer, horses, cattle, mammoth and boars are located in the most remote recesses of the caves far from the inhabited, sunlit entrances.

For example, there was the 1991 discovery of the Grotte Cosquer near present-day Marseille, which contain the first decorated walls so far east in southern France.

The cave is now accessible only from the Mediterranean Sea to a few extraordinary skilled deep sea divers.

Archeologists speculate artists created the animals’ images to guarantee a successful hunt. Many are portrayed pierced with arrows, and gouges in the rock indicate cave-dwellers may have flung spears at the painted game.

Paleolithic art was discovered at the beginning of the second third of the 19th century, simultaneously at Geneva and in France.

The works discovered consisted of two harpoons decorated with geometric figures at Veyrier and a reindeer metapodial engraved with two hinds at Le Chaffaud.

To illuminate the surfaces while working, Paleolithic painters used stone lamps filled with marrow or fat, with a wick perhaps of moss.

For drawing, they used chunks of red and yellow ocher. For painting, they ground these same ochers into powders they mixed with water before applying.
The history of cave painting

Ancient Greek painting

The goods and heroes, their lives and adventures, formed the early subjects of Greek painting.

For example, the importance of seafaring in the Greek world is reflected in many representations of ships in vase painting.

The early Greek work was largely devoted to pottery and tomb decoration, in which much in manner and method was borrowed from Asia, Phoenicia and Egypt.

The plentiful remains of Greek vases demonstrate a range of painting styles from the geometric designs of the Archaic period through to the silhouette like bodies non Black Figure vases.

Later on, painting appeared in flat outline on stone or terra-cotta slabs, sometimes representing processional scenes.

Ancient Greeks greatly admired large scale wall painting. The only substantial and complete example of Greek monumental painting from the Early Classical period comes from the Tomb of the Diver at Paestum.

It consists of five travertine slabs that form four sides and a lids.

Roman copies of Greek wall paintings show that Greek artists often based their wall paintings on myths and legendary adventure.

The 12 labors do Herakles (or Hercules) were a favorite theme. Many copies of original Greek painting were found in the Roman city of Pompeii, which was destroyed by a volcanic eruption in AD 79.
Ancient Greek painting

Ancient Sculpture

Sculpture may be defined as the art of representation in solid material and in three dimension.

The oldest surviving art objects are sculptures made from bones, ivory, stone or antlers. These were either engraved by incising an outlined figure with a sharp tool, craved in deep relief, or fully rounded three dimensional sculpture.

This art includes also casting or founding, which is subdivided into the art of making figures of wax, and that of casting them in all sorts of metals. The method employed have changed with the progress of civilization. Perhaps the most universally used material is clay. This moistened to proper degree of softness, then molded with the hands into the desired shape.

Historians proposes that the art of sculpture originated among the Egyptians, the Etruscans and Greeks, independently of each other; and that their first attempts were introduced and characterized by their public worship or political establishments.

In Egypt the sculpture was largely connected with the temple and the tomb. The tombs called for the most extensive use of the sculptor’s art.

In examining the ruins of Persepolis, sufficient evidence occurred, that sculpture was known in Persia in the period of its earliest kings. In Assyria, the art of sculpture flourishes under Queen Semiramis.
Ancient Sculpture