Early human symbolic behavior in the Late Pleistocene of Wallacea

Abstract

Wallacea, the zone of oceanic islands separating the continental regions of Southeast Asia and Australia, has yielded sparse evidence for the symbolic culture of early modern humans. Here we report evidence for symbolic activity 30,000–22,000 y ago at Leang Bulu Bettue, a cave and rock-shelter site on the Wallacean island of Sulawesi. We describe hitherto undocumented practices of personal ornamentation and portable art, alongside evidence for pigment processing and use in deposits that are the same age as dated rock art in the surrounding karst region. Previously, assemblages of multiple and diverse types of Pleistocene “symbolic” artifacts were entirely unknown from this region. The Leang Bulu Bettue assemblage provides insight into the complexity and diversification of modern human culture during a key period in the global dispersal of our species. It also shows that early inhabitants of Sulawesi fashioned ornaments from body parts of endemic animals, suggesting modern humans integrated exotic faunas and other novel resources into their symbolic world as they colonized the biogeographically unique regions southeast of continental Eurasia.

The contemporary importance and future of Sulawesi’s ancient rock art

“…The relationship between Pleistocene parietal art and portable symbolic material culture also needs better exploration as a recent publication by Brumm et al (2017) highlights. They found 'an unusually rich and unique symbolic complex' in archaeological deposits dated to between 30,000 to 22,000 years ago (Brumm et al 2017:4105) consisting of disc-shaped beads from a Babyrousa sp.…”

“…Sulawesi has produced exciting archaeological discoveries of global significance for over 60 years, as this volume attests. From van Heekeren's (1952Heekeren's ( , 1957 early reports on intriguing stone tools and rock art to the recent publication of what may well be the world's oldest rock art, at least 40,000 years old , to the more recent publications about stone tools dated to between 118,000 and 194,000 years BP (van den Bergh et al 2016) and unique Pleistocene portable symbolic material culture (Brumm et al 2017), Sulawesi has been at the forefront of our understanding of the long-term human history of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA), Sunda and even Sahul. In this paper, we focus on the rock art of Southwest Sulawesi, particularly paintings (Figure 4.1), stencils and drawings, and outline seven future research priorities in order to better understand the rock art imagery as well as the relationship between the artists and other peoples of nearby Borneo and even northern Australia.…”

Black drawings at the cave site of Gua Pondoa, Southeast Sulawesi: The motifs and a comparison with pigment art elsewhere in Sulawesi and the broader Western Pacific region

“…Of particular appeal were roomy caverns with an open floor area, providing adequate light and comfortable space for maintenance and subsistence activities and large enough for group dwelling (Hakim 2006). In Southwest Sulawesi, the oldest known habitation deposits date to at least 40,000 years ago, and the use of caverns for ceremonial purposes evidently has an equal time depth (Brumm et al 2017). This is demonstrated by uranium-thorium (UTh) dates of between c. 40,000 and 18,000 years ago obtained on calcite deposits overlying hand stencils and naturalistic ungulate depictions painted on the walls of Maros limestone caverns (Aubert et al 2014).…”

A different paradigm for the initial colonisation of Sahul

“…) and the on‐going excavation at the less‐disturbed and nearby Leang Bulu Bettue (Brumm et al . ) might provide such evidence, given that deep‐trench excavations at neither of these sites have reached bedrock below cultural deposits spanning 50 to 40 ka; see also the continuing work at Liang Bua on Flores (Sutikna et al . , ; Morley et al .…”