44,000–30,000 BCE: (The Oldest Known Shamanistic Rock Art — The Recurrent Connection of Rock Art and Shamanism Around the World Implying That Rock Art Is Lik…

44,000–30,000 BCE: (The Oldest Known Shamanistic Rock Art — The Recurrent Connection of Rock Art and Shamanism Around the World Implying That Rock Art Is Likely as Ancient as the Religion It Expresses, the Earliest Art Surfaces Being Open Rock Faces and Shelters Now Worn Away by Wind and Water, the Oldest Securely Dated Finds Coming from Caves in Far-Separated Parts of the World Including Apollo Cave in Namibia at Over 30,000 Years Ago, Numerous Caves in Southwestern Europe, and Recently Discovered Sites in Indonesia Dating to as Much as 44,000 Years Ago): The recurrent global connection between rock art and shamanism carries a further notable implication: the practice of rock art is likely as ancient as the shamanistic religion it expresses. But the earliest art would have been created on open rock faces and in rock shelters — surfaces exposed to wind and water that would have entirely worn away these early artistic expressions over the millennia. The oldest securely dated finds of shamanistic art yet known come from caves in far-separated parts of the world: Apollo Cave in Namibia, in southern Africa, at a bit over thirty thousand years ago; numerous cave sites in southwestern Europe; and recently discovered sites in Indonesia dating as much as forty-four thousand years ago. The geographical spread of these oldest surviving examples — Namibia, Europe, Indonesia — itself tells the story of African dispersal. These three regions represent three different waves of the outward movement of fully modern humans from Africa, and in each region the earliest inhabitants produced shamanistic art in caves that happened to preserve it. The open-air art that surely preceded these cave paintings — created on exposed rock surfaces in eastern and southern Africa tens of thousands of years before anyone painted a bison in Lascaux or a pig-deer in Sulawesi — is gone, consumed by the elements. What survives in caves is only the remnant of a tradition that was already ancient when the first cave painter mixed ochre with water. The true origins of art lie not in the caves of Europe or Indonesia but on rock faces in Africa that have long since been scoured clean.