This hand stencil in Indonesia is now the oldest known rock art

A stencil made on a cave wall about 67,800 years ago is the oldest rock art ever discovered.

“This image of a hand was created by someone placing their hand against the wall and then spraying a mouthful of paint around it,” says archaeologist Adam Brumm. The stencil is among hundreds of later paintings of animals and other designs daubed in ochre and charcoal on cave walls on Muna Island, near the large Indonesian island of Sulawesi, Brumm and colleagues report January 21 in Nature.

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