Ancient tools designed for ocher processing had been previously discovered on Sulawesi Island, hinting that these tools could have been used to create the drawings.

A nearby cave, Leang Balangajia 1, boasts its own hog art, dating back at least 32,000 years. It’s possible that the drawing was completed over a number of years, suggested by the different pigments used to complete the artwork.

“They’re very, very small, little pigs, but these ancient artists portrayed them with such resplendent fatness, which I imagine was something to do with their interest in killing the largest and fattest pigs they could find, which yielded the largest amount of meat and protein,” said Adam Brumm, first author of the study, speaking to National Geographic. The drawing is actually a small drove of pigs, although one image stands out among the rest: a large, warty swine on the run, its size indicated by a pair of hands reaching toward its meaty backside. Superficial mineral testing has revealed the doodle, originally discovered in 2017 by a local researcher, is at least 45,500 years old, but the task of dating has taken years, according to the new study published in Science Advances. This little piggy went wee, wee, wee into prehistory.Īrchaeologists believe they have discovered the oldest painting of an animal in human history - a portly pig drawn in ocher on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, at a site known as Leang Tedongnge. Man carrying 800-year-old mummy in food deliver bag arrested, claims it is his ‘spiritual girlfriend’ Hair comb made from part of a human skull unearthed in England Archaeologists in Egypt unearth Sphinx-like Roman-era statueĪrchaeologists discover hidden chamber inside Great Pyramid of Giza

Cute animal doodle