Indonesia fires burn within 800m of cave housing some of world's oldest art
Firefighters say fires came within 800m of the Maros-Pangkep cave, and researchers told CNA heat and smoke risk speeding up deterioration of the works.
Indonesia's worst forest and land fires in years are now burning close to some of the oldest known cave art in the world.
A strong El Nino is lifting temperatures and curbing rainfall, which leaves woodland and peat areas prone to burning, and Indonesia is contending with its fiercest blazes across forest and land since 2015. Fires have reached Sulawesi too, among them South Sulawesi, home to limestone caves holding the oldest prehistoric art on Earth, though Sumatra and Borneo suffer the most. Researchers told CNA that heat and smoke risk speeding up the deterioration of the works.
Fires came within 800m of a cave
Smoke hung above the karst scenery of the surrounding national park and UNESCO Global Geopark while firefighters tried to extinguish blazes close to the Maros-Pangkep cave. According to firefighter Muhammad Ikfar, flames stayed close to the site for over a week earlier this month, getting as near as 800m to the cave. Between Sep 30 and Oct 18, according to him, upward of 270 hectares inside the national park were burned.
Ikfar said crews were tackling blazes elsewhere in the park on Thursday (Oct 22) and Friday, with dry weather and still no rainfall.
What the art shows
Researchers from Griffith University in Australia dated an artwork in a Maros-Pangkep cave, in South Sulawesi, that shows figures resembling humans engaging with a pig, and put its age at a minimum of 51,200 years. A reddish-coloured hand stencil on Muna island, off Sulawesi, was separately given a minimum age of 67,800 years.
Heat and soot
Griffith University archaeologist Basran Burhan described how the damage can happen. "The first and most destructive effect is the heat. Even without direct fire touching the paintings, it could ruin them because it changes the temperature around the paintings and accelerates the process of corrosion," he said.
Smoke is another concern. "They create soot on the paintings and cover them, so that the paintings will become blurred and difficult to identify," he said.
Burhan also called for action. "If we don't do something about this quick, if there isn't any tactical mitigation efforts for this incident we will lose one of the most amazing evidence of human history in Maros-Pangkep," he said. "And that is a great shame."
