A Giant Skull From Indonesia Made up of Lots of Animal Skulls

The discovery of a giant skull made up of many animal skulls in Indonesia has caused quite a stir in the scientific community.

This unusual artifact was recently unearthed in a remote region of the country and has sparked many questions about its origin and purpose.

The skull, which measures over six feet in length and is composed of hundreds of individual animal skulls, has been dated to be around 5,000 years old.

This makes it one of the oldest and largest artifacts of its kind ever discovered.

Scientists are still working to understand exactly how the skull was created, but it appears to have been assembled using the skulls of many different animals.

These include deer, boars, and even some large predators like tigers and crocodiles.

One theory is that the skull was created as part of a ritual or ceremony in ancient Indonesian culture.

Similar artifacts have been discovered in other parts of the world and are believed to have been used in spiritual practices or as a way to honor deceased ancestors.

Another possibility is that the skull was created as a form of art or expression.

Many ancient cultures used skulls and bones as a way to create intricate and meaningful works of art, and it’s possible that the giant skull was intended to convey a specific message or meaning.

Regardless of its origin, the discovery of the giant skull has provided valuable insights into the culture and practices of ancient Indonesian people.

It’s also a reminder of the incredible creativity and ingenuity of our ancestors, who were able to create such remarkable artifacts using only the resources available to them at the time.

As scientists continue to study the giant skull and other artifacts from this time period, we can expect to learn even more about the fascinating and complex cultures that existed in ancient times.

And who knows what other incredible discoveries might be waiting to be unearthed in the years to come?

The Papuan Tribe Cares For a 250-year-old Mummy To preserve Ancient Rite

It’s all about paying respect and preserving a tradition. How would you like to spend the night with the mummified remains of a long-dead relative?

What sounds like a scene from some schlocky horror flick is part of real life for a tribal leader in Wogi,a remote village in the Indonesian province of Papua.

Eli Mabel of the Dani tribe (see more remarkable photos below) spends many nights in the hut where the mummy is kept to make sure nothing happens to it, he told Agence France-Presse.

In protecting the blackened mummy ― said to be the remains of an ancestor of his who ruled some 250 years ago ― Mabel aims to preserve the old Dani tradition of mummification,in which the bodies of venerated tribespeople were preserved with smoke after death.

“We must protect our culture, including the ceremonies for the mummy, the way we treat it, and maintain and fire for it,” Mabel told AFP.

The mummy is decorated with feathers, pig tusks and a traditional gourd covering for the penis. A fire is kept burning in the hut, which is known as a “honai.”

To mummify the bodies, the Dani people dried them under the sun and then stashed them in a cave, Dr. Semiarto Aji Purwanto, a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Indonesia and an expert on Dani culture, told The Huffington Post in an email.

Next, he said, the remains were exposed to hot smoke, drained of liquified fat through piercings and slathered with lard. The entire process took months.

Why go to all that trouble?

“By keeping their bodies, [the Dani] believed to have [the] blessing from the ancestor so they can be more prosperous,” Purwanto said, adding that all of the Dani mummies are curled up “like a fetus when in the womb.”

Mummification was once common among the Dani but died out after Christian missionaries who came to the area 30 to 50 years ago encouraged them to bury rather than mummify their dead, Purwanto said, adding that only six or seven mummies are left. But mummies never die.

This photo, taken on Aug. 7, 2016, shows chief Eli Mabel with the mummified remains of his ancestor Agat Mamete Mabel outside a traditional house in the village of Wogi in Wamena, the long-isolated home of the Dani tribe high in the Papuan central highlands.

The Dani people no longer practice mummification, but tribespeople keeps a number of mummies, some a few hundred years old, as a symbol of respect to their ancestors.

The mummy is curled up like a fetus, like all mummies in the Dani tradition.

Dani man in Wamena on Aug. 8, 2016. The man was participating in the 27th Baliem Valley Festival, featuring highland tribes of Dani, Yali and Lani in their mock battles as a symbol of high spirit and power that have been practiced for generations. The festival was held from Aug. 8 – 10.

Archaeologists Have Discovered a Pristine 45,000-Year-Old Cave Painting of a Pig That May Be the Oldest Artwork in the World

Archaeologists believe they have discovered the world’s oldest-known representational artwork: three wild pigs painted deep in a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi at least 45,500 years ago.

The ancient images, revealed this week in the journal Science Advances, were found in Leang Tedongnge cave. Made with red ochre pigment, the painting appears to depict a group of Sulawesi warty pigs, two of which appear to be fighting. Those two images are badly damaged, but the third, possibly watching the drama unfold, remains in near-pristine condition.

“The world’s oldest surviving representational image of an animal,” the paper noted, the painting “may also constitute the most ancient figurative artwork known to archaeology.”

“I was struck dumb,” Adam Brumm of Griffith University, Australia, the article’s lead author, told NewScientist. “It’s one of the most spectacular and well-preserved figurative animal paintings known from the whole region, and it just immediately blew me away.”

Archaeologist Basran Burhan, a Griffith University PhD student, discovered the cave and its prehistoric paintings in 2022. It’s only accessible during the dry season, via a long trek over mountains through a rough forest path.

Previously, the oldest-known figurative art was actually from a nearby cave, Leang Bulu’Sipong, discovered by the same team. Announced in late 2022, that 43,900-year-old work depicts eight figures with weapons in hand approaching wild pigs and small native buffaloes. In 2022, the archaeologists also made headlines with the discovery of an animal painting at least 35,700 years old, and hand stencils from some 40,000 years ago.

As for the oldest art in the world, “it depends on what definition of ‘art’ you use,” Griffith University archaeologist Maxime Aubert, one of the paper’s co-authors, told National Geographic.

Some archaeologists believe that red markings found in a South African cave in 2022 represent the world’s first known drawings, created an astonishing 73,000 years ago, and 64,000-year-old Neanderthal cave paintings were discovered in Spain in 2022.

Such discoveries in Indonesia throw into question long-held beliefs that art originated in Europe, where sites like Spain’s El Castillo cave and France’s Chauvet cave feature work from 35,000 to 40,000 years ago.

The newest find “adds further weight to the view that the first modern human rock art traditions probably did not arise in Ice Age Europe as long assumed,” Brumm told Smithsonian magazine.

To date the newly found Sulawesi artwork, Brumm’s team applied uranium-series dating—a somewhat controversial technique—to a calcite mineral crust that covered part of the best-preserved of the three pigs.

Created by water dripping down the cave walls, the mineral formation contains uranium. The theory is that, based on how much of that uranium has decayed, scientists can figure out a minimum date for the painting underneath.

Despite the artworks’ advanced age, “the people who made it were fully modern, they were just like us, they had all of the capacity and the tools to do any painting that they liked,” Aubert told Agence France Presse.

But other experts not involved with the study are less certain that homo sapiens necessarily created the images.

“An anatomically modern human is an anatomical definition. It has nothing to do with cognition, intelligence or behavior,” University of Barcelona archaeologist João Zilhão told the New York Times. “There is no evidence about the anatomy of the people who did this stuff.”

Regardless of the species responsible, the paintings provide clues about what life was like in ancient Sulawesi, suggesting the importance of the warty pig to hunter-gatherer society.

“These are small native pigs that are endemic to Sulawesi and are still found on the island, although in ever-dwindling numbers,” Brumm told Smithsonian. “The common portrayal of these warty pigs in the Ice Age rock art also offers hints at the deep symbolic significance and perhaps spiritual value of Sulawesi warty pigs in the ancient hunting culture,”

Another newly discovered pig painting from a nearby cave dated with the same method was found to be 32,000 years old, and more similarly significant finds may be forthcoming.

“We have found and documented many rock art images in Sulawesi that still await scientific dating,” study coauthor Adhi Agus Oktaviana, a PhD student at Griffith, told CNN. “We expect the early rock art of this island to yield even more significant discoveries.”