Lubang Jeriji Saléh

Picture cool, damp air on your skin, and the slow drip of water somewhere in the dark. The limestone underfoot is uneven and slick. Then a headlamp beam moves across the rock overhead, and hands appear. Dozens of them, outlined in faded red-orange, spread across the ceiling like a crowd waving from very far away. This is Lubang Jeriji Saléh, a cave in the forests of Borneo. Some of the oldest known figurative art made by human beings is painted on these walls.

First, a word about where you are. You may have started from Tawau, on the Malaysian side of Borneo, in the state of Sabah. The cave itself lies across the border, in the Indonesian province of East Kalimantan. It sits in a remote karst region known as Sangkulirang-Mangkalihat. Karst means limestone country, shaped by water into cliffs, sinkholes and caves. Reaching it is a real expedition, not a quick excursion. So if you are here in person, you have already done something few travellers ever do.

Look at the landscape around the cave entrance. Grey limestone towers rise out of dense tropical forest. Their faces are streaked black and white by rainwater, and roots grip every crack. Over many thousands of years, rain dissolved the soft rock from the inside. It left hollow chambers, overhangs and long passages. Ancient people used these sheltered spaces. They came for shelter, and they also came to paint. The word lubang simply means a hole, or a cave, in Indonesian and Malay.

For most of history, the outside world knew nothing about these paintings. In the 1990s, French and Indonesian explorers began to document the caves of this peninsula. They climbed the cliffs and searched the chambers. They found hand stencils, animal figures and strange symbols on the rock. Local communities knew the caves. But the scientific world was only starting to understand what they held. The real surprise was still to come.

That surprise was about age. In 2018, a team of Indonesian and Australian researchers published their results in the journal Nature. One painting on these walls shows a large animal, drawn in reddish-orange pigment. It is probably a wild cow, perhaps a banteng, a species of wild cattle still found in parts of Southeast Asia. The researchers concluded that this painting is at least 40,000 years old. At the time, it was the oldest known figurative painting anywhere on Earth.

How can anyone date a picture with no signature and no written record? The answer is the cave itself. Water seeps through limestone and leaves thin crusts of mineral called calcite. In places, these crusts formed on top of the paint. Calcite contains tiny traces of uranium, which decays at a known, steady rate. By measuring that decay, scientists can calculate when the crust formed. The paint underneath must be older still. So the result is a minimum age... the true age could be greater.

Now look again at the hands. Most of them are not painted hands. They are stencils. A person pressed a hand flat against the rock. Then they sprayed pigment around it, probably by blowing it from the mouth or through a tube. When the hand lifted away, a pale outline remained, framed in colour. Some of the oldest stencils here are also tens of thousands of years old. Each one is a direct trace of a single living person, standing roughly where you are.

The art did not stay the same over time. The researchers found different phases of painting. The earliest work uses red and orange tones and shows animals and hands. Much later, people made hand stencils in a darker, mulberry-purple colour. Some of these later hands have lines and dots painted inside them, like decoration or tattoos. Later still, small human figures appear. So these walls are not one moment. They are many generations, adding to the same surface.

Here is something many visitors miss. When the first artists worked here, Borneo was not an island in the way it is today. During the ice ages, sea levels were much lower. Borneo, Sumatra, Java and mainland Asia were joined by dry land. Scientists call this lost landmass Sundaland. People and animals could walk across areas that are now shallow sea. The wild cattle on this wall belonged to that wider, connected world.

The discovery also changed a big question. For a long time, many people believed figurative art began in Europe. The famous painted caves of France and Spain shaped that idea. Lubang Jeriji Saléh showed that people in Southeast Asia were painting animals just as early, or earlier. Since then, discoveries on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi have produced even older dates. Together, these sites suggest that the urge to make images travelled with humans across the world.

Think about the practical side of this art. The artists needed light in the dark, perhaps from fires or burning torches. They needed pigment, most likely ochre, a natural earth rich in iron oxide that gives red and orange colours. They needed to climb, because some images sit high on the rock. Nobody knows exactly why they painted. Researchers can only offer ideas about ritual, identity or storytelling. Here, honest uncertainty is part of the experience.

These paintings are fragile. Their survival for so long is close to a small miracle. Changes in humidity, dust, smoke and simple touch can damage them. Researchers have also raised concerns about natural deterioration in caves across this region. That is why access is controlled and visits usually happen with local guides and permits. If you are here, keep your hands away from the walls. Let your light rest gently on the surface rather than staring straight into the art.

Before you turn back toward the entrance, pause for a moment. Switch off your light if your guide allows it, and listen. The drip of water. Your own breathing. The forest sounds faintly through the rock. Then look up one last time at the outlined hands. Someone stood here, tens of thousands of years ago, and left a mark that said, simply, I was here. As you walk out into the green light of the forest, you carry that message with you.