Discovering the world’s oldest known cave art: SCU Buzz

While other children spent the school holidays at the beach, visiting their friends and going to the cinema, Professor Renaud Joannes-Boyau was visiting archaeological sites around Europe with his grandmother.

“She [my grandmother] took me everywhere in France and in Europe to visit archaeological sites and so on. So, I think she seeded that thirst of knowledge and curiosity at a young age,” Professor Joannes-Boyau said.

“I [later] went into physics applied to archaeology and human evolution, and then did my PhD again on improving dating techniques for human evolution.”

Based at Southern Cross University’s Northern Rivers campus, Professor Joannes-Boyau he is now leading ground breaking discoveries into human evolution as an expert in archaeogeochemistry. 

His latest research has uncovered the oldest known evidence of storytelling in art, hidden in the narrow depths of a cave in Indonesia. The painting of a hunting scene, located in the limestone cave of Leang Karampuang in the Maros-Pangkep region of South Sulawesi, portays three human-like figures interacting with a wild pig. 

Using cutting-edge laser-ablation technology, Professor Joannes-Boyau was able to accurately date the cave art at over 51,000 years old.
“In the Louvre you’ll see some of the most famous paintings in the world. The Mona Lisa is encased in protective glass so people can’t touch it or damage it,” Professor Joannes-Boyau explains.

“Well, nature is quite smart and what happens is water actually trickles down inside the calc system goes over the [cave] painting. And as it does, it just deposits a little bit calcium carbonate. And then this will basically create a varnish on top of it and preserve the painting. Because it's done in layers over a long period of time it also encapsulates a lot of elements like uranium.  And by measuring the decay of uranium then we can actually calculate an age for the rock art.”

He chats to River on the latest episode of the SCU Buzz podcast to chat about discovering the world’s oldest known cave art and other exciting discoveries he has been involved in through his research at Southern Cross University.