CAVE ART

Climate Change is Destroying The World's Oldest Known Rock Art

Researchers have warned that climate change is destroying some of the world's oldest known rock art in the tropics. Due to chemical changes induced by rising temperatures, cave paintings dating back 44,000 years that are the oldest surviving portrayals of hunts and supernatural beings are "wrinkling off walls." 

Chemical processes such as salt crystallisation are destroying the painted limestone cave surfaces in southern Sulawesi, Indonesia. According to the researchers, these changes are eroding Pleistocene-aged rock art panels at 11 limestone cave locations in Maros-Pangkep. In the tropics, the consequences of global warming can be up to three times greater. A warty pig drawn 45,500 years ago on the wall of a neighbouring cave is the world's earliest picture of an animal. Sulawesi's cave art is far older than Europe's prehistoric cave art.

INTERESTING FINDINGS ABOUT CAVE ART:

Salts in three of the samples contain calcium sulphate and sodium chloride, which are known to form crystals on rock surfaces and cause them to break, according to the researchers who investigated flakes of rock that had begun to detach from cave surfaces. Geological salts can grow to be three times their original size on hot days. Salt crystals growing on top of and behind the rock art can cause pieces of the artwork to flake away from the cave walls. The pigmented artwork was deteriorating owing to a process known as haloclasty, which is produced by the formation of salt crystals as a result of periodic fluctuations in temperature and humidity induced by the region's alternating wet and dry weather. In recent years, Indonesia has also been hit by multiple natural disasters, accelerating the deteriorating process.

PAST AND FUTURE OF CAVE ART

With the increased rate of environmental degradation, the experts have advised that the sites be monitored physically and chemically on a regular basis, similar to the preservation efforts at prehistoric cave art sites such as Lascaux and Altamira in France and Spain.