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2/02/2026

Topic Reading-Vol.5032-2/2/2026

Dear MEL Topic Readers, 
Oldest cave painting of red claw hand could rewrite human creativity timeline
Homo sapiens, modern humans, moved from Africa into Europe and Asia, and overlapped and interbred with Neanderthals, extinct sister species, until 45,000 years ago. Early humans lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers until around 10,000 years ago, when they started domesticating plants, such as wheat, barley, or rice, and animals, like sheep, goats, cattle, or pigs.
Recently, on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, a stencilled outline of a hand made with red pigment was found on the wall of a cave. The painting is estimated to be as old as 67,800 years, about 1,100 years older than a stencil found in Spain. The faded hand stencil, along with other spectacular cave paintings, is believed to be the world’s oldest rock art that has been found so far. Also, the finding indicates that Homo sapiens had reached Australia and New Guinea about 15,000 years earlier than previously thought. Only recently, the earliest Homo sapiens was found to have been around 700,000 years ago, 300,000 years earlier than the previous estimate. The history of humans is being rewritten both backward and forward.
Read the article and learn about the recent discovery of the oldest art.

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