via Smithsonian Magazine, 20 March 2020: Another story about the recently-discovered portable rock art discovered in Sulawesi.
Twenty thousand years ago, humans probably didn’t have much in the way of pockets. But they were still keen on manufacturing and carrying pocket-sized trinkets—including some petite engraved artworks honoring the wonders of the natural world, as new research reveals.
Archaeologists excavating an Indonesian cave have unearthed two stone “plaquettes” depicting an anoa (dwarf buffalo) and what may be a star, flower or eye—the first portable engravings of this kind found in Southeast Asia. The findings, described in a paper published this week in the journal Nature Human Behavior, further refute the outdated notion that humans’ ability for complex artistic expression evolved exclusively in Europe, reports Dyani Lewis for Cosmos.
