The ability to produce recognizable depictions of objects from the natural world—known as
figurative art—is unique to Homo sapiens and may be one of the cognitive traits that …

Previous dating research indicated that the Indonesian island of Sulawesi is host to some of
the oldest known rock art,–. That work was based on solution uranium-series (U-series) …

Archaeologists have long been puzzled by the appearance in Europe∼ 40–35 thousand
years (kyr) ago of a rich corpus of sophisticated artworks, including parietal art (that is …

Wallacea, the zone of oceanic islands separating the continental regions of Southeast Asia
and Australia, has yielded sparse evidence for the symbolic culture of early modern humans …

Jerimalai is a rock shelter in East Timor with cultural remains dated to 42,000 years ago,
making it one of the oldest known sites of modern human activity in island Southeast Asia. It …

Homo sapiens may have colonized the Indonesian archipelagos during the early Upper
Pleistocene, but most of the secure early evidence concentrates on its later period, since ca …

Abstract Recent excavations at Leang Bulu Bettue, a limestone cave on the Indonesian
island of Sulawesi, have yielded a collection of flaked chert and limestone artefacts with …

Abstract and depictive representations produced by drawing—known from Europe, Africa
and Southeast Asia after 40,000 years ago—are a prime indicator of modern cognition and …

Research in human evolution in Asia has long been thought to lag far behind similar
research in Africa and Europe. However, the limited dissemination of findings is often to …

In October 2014, the world learned that the oldest surviving hand stencils and rock paintings
of animals were located in southern Sulawesi rather than in Europe. These results …