Location Dossier · The Living World
THE PAINTED CHAMBER
The rock-art wall, lit from the mouth
The Living World · Rock-art cave · The first marks
A chamber lit from its mouth, its wall carrying blown hand stencils and a painted beast. The oldest art known anywhere is in caves like this.
Type
Rock-art cave
Real basis
Lubang Jeriji Saléh and neighbours, art dated beyond 40,000 years (Aubert et al., Nature 2018)
In the story
The first marks and the gatherings around them
01
The place
A cave chamber lit from the entrance, its pale wall marked with hand stencils blown in ochre and a painted animal. The Sangkulirang caves hold some of the oldest figurative art on Earth, beyond forty thousand years old.
02
In the story
Where the first ochre marks go up on the wall and the band gathers around them. The mark made to outlast everything.
The Living World · TEBO 1 · The Dawn of Us. Imagery is AI-generated concept art. The Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat karst is a real region of East Kalimantan holding Liang Tebo.