This 45,000-year-old warty pig is now the earliest known art created by our species.

https://bit.ly/3oDyxUZ 

This builds on the earlier stunning work by Adam Brumm, Maxime Aubert and their teams, such as this magnificent unit, a banteng discovered a couple of years ago, which was painted a thousand years later .

Brumm’s team has discovered and dated other Indonesian cave art, all of which pre-dates European art, such as the Löwenmensch of Hohlenstein Stadel.

...and pre-dates the art of the French caves of Lascaux by 20,000 years.

There is a painting in a cave in Cantabria in Spain which may be older, around 60kya, and therefore may be by Neanderthals, but the dating has been challenged.

Nevertheless, this warty pig shows us clearly that so-called behavioural modernity was global at least 45,000 years ago. These people were us.

These ideas are all discussed in my Book of Humans https://bit.ly/35BhbAr 

And also in @WanderingGaia wonderful Transcendence https://bit.ly/35GNFcJ 

And here are a couple of the team! Massive cap doff to you both. https://twitter.com/drhanneke/status/1349644023850524677