A painting discovered on the wall of an Indonesian cave has been found to be 44,000 years old.
The art appears to show a buffalo being hunted by part-human, part-animal creatures holding spears and possibly ropes.
Some researchers think the scene could be the world's oldest-recorded story.
The findings were presented in the journal Nature by archaeologists from Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia.
Adam Brumm - an archaeologist at Griffith - first saw the pictures two years ago, after a colleague in Indonesia shimmied up a fig tree to reach the cave passage.
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"These images appeared on my iPhone," said Mr Brumm. "I think I said the characteristic Australian four-letter word out very loud."
The Indonesian drawing is not the oldest in the world. Last year, scientists said they found "humanity's oldest drawing" on a fragment of rock in South Africa, dated at 73,000 years old.
What do the drawings show?
The drawings were found in a cave called Leang Bulu'Sipong 4 in the south of Sulawesi, an Indonesian island east of Borneo.
The panel is almost five metres wide and appears to show a type of buffalo called an anoa, plus wild pigs found on Sulawesi.
Alongside them are smaller figures that look human - but also have animal features such as tails and snouts.
In one section, an anoa is flanked by several figures holding spears.
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"I've never seen anything like this before," said Mr Brumm. "I mean, we've seen hundreds of rock art sites in this region - but we've never seen anything like a hunting scene."
However, other researchers have questioned whether the panel represents a single story - and say it could be a series of images painted over a longer period.
"Whether it's a scene is questionable," says Paul Pettitt, an archaeologist and rock-art specialist at Durham University told Nature.
Source :BBC.com