A team of researchers working in Indonesia dated 12 hand stencils and two animal depictions located in 7 cave sites in the ‘tower karst’ of southwest Sulawesi. The oldest of the images, a hand stencil, was found to be at least 40,000 years old.

Archeologists have generally believed that rock art first emerged in Europe, where rock art dating from 41,000 years ago has been found. This finding is significant because it shows that art, and abstract thought, evolved separately in at least two different places or that they date back to a much earlier date and a common ancestor.

“Rock art is one of the first indicators of an abstract mind – the onset of being human as we know it,” said Thomas Sutikna, who is completing a PhD at the University of Wollongong UOW) Australia’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences in a statement.

Sutikna is a co-author of a paper on the topic, published in the October 9 edition of the journal Nature.

“Rock art might have emerged independently at about the same time in early modern human populations in Europe and Southeast Asia, or it might have been widely practiced by the first modern humans to leave Africa tens of thousands of years earlier – if so, then animal art could have much deeper origins,” said Sutikna.

The research adds to a growing pile of evidence that suggests that human cultural and technological evolution followed similar paths among different groups who were not in communication with one another. It is fairly clear that seafaring and drumming evolved independently in multiple cultures.

Research published in the journal Science on September 26 also shows that tool making technology appears to have evolved in similar ways among cultures who were not in communication with one another and, now, it appears that art and most importantly abstract thought did not evolve in one location and spread but rather emerged in multiple locations at roughly the same time.