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Caves in the Maros-Pangkep karst

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Hand painting inside the Pettakere cave

Pettakere cave (Leang Pettakere) is a cave in Bantimurung, Sulawesi Selatan in Indonesia with murals from pre-historic times. The cave along with the other caves close by Pettae-, Jane-, Saripa- and Karrasa creates the "Pre-historic place Leang-Leang".[1] They all are limestone caves and lay 12 kilometres from the town of Maros and 32 kilometers from the city of Makassar. In the beginning of the cave, which has its entrance 30 meters above a rice-field below, there are 26 red and white standard painted hands prints on the walls and with a half meter long painted red hog deer in the middle.[2][3][4] The caves large room has several small intendens which are presumed to have been sleeping places for the people who lived in the cave.[3] The cave has a temperature of 27 degrees during the daytime.[3]

The cave has for a long time been known and used by the local people. Archeological diggings have started at the caves nearby during the 1950s by Dutch archeologists and the Pettakare cave was examined for the first time by British archeologist Ian Glover in 1975.[5]

The hand paintings on the walls wereestimated to be between 35,000 and 40,000 years old by scientific examinations conducted in 2011.[6] The age of the paintings was estimated through analysis by the traces of small radioactive traces of uran isotopes present in the crust that had been built up on top of the paintings.[3] They are as old or even older than other known cave paintings in Europe, for example the Cave of El Castillo in Spain or Gorham's Cave in Gibraltar.

References

  1. ^ "Sulawesi cave of hands". The Brunei Times. Retrieved 16 November 2014.
  2. ^ "Sulawesi ancient rock art". Retrieved 16 November 2014.
  3. ^ a b c d Exploring leang leang caves Retrieved 15 November 2014
  4. ^ "Indonesian cave paintings rewriting art history". DW.DE. Retrieved 16 November 2014.
  5. ^ "cave paintings at Leang Pettakere". Retrieved 16 November 2014.
  6. ^ Anthony Dosseto and Thomas Sutikna i Nature 8 October 2014.
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