Lene Hara
 
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The Lene Hara cave is located near Tutuala on the eastern tip of Timor
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Lene Hara ( Léné Ara ) is a limestone cave near the town of Tutuala , on the eastern tip of East Timor .
Appearance
Lene Hara is a large, open, washed-out cave located on a coral limestone terrace raised from the sea . It has an elliptical cross-section and opens to the east, where mainly fallen rocks are located below the top of the cave. Sediments are widespread, with today's surface generally sloping to the north / northeast while speleothem formations , including flowstone floors and large stalagmites and columns, are also present.
fauna
Western hairless bats (Dobsonia peronii peronii) live near the cave .
Archaeological finds
The cave was first explored in 1963 by the Portuguese anthropologist António de Almeida. Since the 1990s, Sue O'Connor of the Australian National University has been studying Lene Hara and the limestone overhang Ile Kére Kére to the north . It was able to prove settlements back to the time between 41 and 43,000 years (as of 2017).
In the left part (when looking into the cave) pottery shards were discovered up to a depth of 0.25 m, stone artifacts, shells of sea clams and bones were found throughout. The layers near the surface were dated to the Holocene , but the determination of the age of the large part of the 0.8 m deep excavation revealed an age between 34,000 and 39,000 years. Material from an excavation in the center of the cave produced similar finds. Most of the sediments there were dated between 21,000 and 30,000 years ago. In contrast, two excavations on the right edge only brought material from the Holocene. Under the edge of a large speleothem column, finds were discovered that were enclosed by the rock. The investigation found an age of 41,000 to 43,000 years.
Paintings and engravings
In Lene Hara there are cave paintings in the entrance area , for example on the southwest wall or near it, on the ceiling, ten meters from the entrance. Some are also on the large (southern) stalagmite column. They can largely be attributed to the "Austronesian Painting Tradition" (APT). Most often red and black pigments were used, an image also contains green elements. The paintings include depictions of boats or animals, such as birds, fish in X-ray style ("x-ray fish") and flying foxes . There are also anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures. Other pictures only consist of lines, geometric shapes, suns / stars surrounded by rays and circles. The dating of a calcite layer close to a picture revealed an age of about 6300 years, which would confirm the assignment to the APT. However, this did not guarantee the age of the picture itself.
In 2009, faces were found in Lene Hara that were engraved in the stone and estimated to be between 10,200 and 12,500 years old. Three of these petroglyphs are facing towards the interior of the cave on the partially collapsed column at the entrance, two more on the northern column.
In 2020, 16 newly discovered pictures of hand outlines in Lena Hara were reported, eleven of which are on the south and four on the north wall, a maximum of 20 meters from the entrance. Two such pictures on the large southern column were previously known. The artists had blown a red dye on their hands pressed against the wall. The hand outlines differ significantly from the more recent animal and geometric motifs from the Holocene. Nobody is higher than 2.2 meters from the ground. There is also the last outline. The outlines of the pillar can be easily reached by climbing up it. Eight of the 18 outlines were identified as left hands, seven as right hands; no statement could be made with three outlines. Parts of the forearms can only be seen in two images. The hand outline is on a gypsum- based mineral crust that lies on top of the limestone. The pictures are badly damaged by environmental influences, but they are recognizable. In eight other places (six on the south wall, two on the north wall) there could have been hand outlines; this suggests pigment splashes and edges. Since the mineral crust is already too badly damaged here, nothing more can be seen. Since there are many fragments with red spots in the cave, the original number of hand outlines could have been much larger.
Determining the age was difficult. However, overlays helped. A hand outline is partially painted over by a sun or star motif, which is attributed to the APT. In addition, the sun star is painted on both the mineral crust and the bedrock, so that the weathering must have taken place beforehand. The only two hand outlines that were already known are attached to the mineral layer and the bedrock. Faded geometric motifs lying next to them do not overlap. Therefore, these are considered to be younger than those that are only on the mineral crust. A star / sun motif covers a spot of color that resembles the pigment of the hand outlines. The scientists therefore come to the conclusion that the hand outlines date from the early to mid-Holocene or from the Pleistocene . Ocher-colored artifacts and ocher-colored fragments from other locations in East Timor attest to the use of the red pigment for about 42,000 years. In Lene Hara itself, a piece of ocher was found with 33,000 to 35,000 year old scratches and sanding marks, which indicates the production of the liquid red paint, which was also used for the hand outlines.
Only the first two known outlines and the one closest to the entrance on the south wall show references to the APT. Also, most of the hand outlines are deeper in the cave than the typical APT images. The same hand outlines can also be found on neighboring islands and in Australia , which is why the theory of the settlement of Australia via Timor is further supported. Previously, rock carvings of this age were only found on the northern route via Sulawesi .
See also
literature
- Peter Bellwood : Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago. New edition. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu HI 1997, ISBN 0-8248-1883-0 .
- Ian Glover: Archeology in Eastern Timor, 1966-67. Department of Prehistory, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra 1986, ISBN 0-86784-943-6 ( Terra Australis 11).
- Sue O'Connor: Nine New Painted Rock Art Sites from East Timor in the context of the Western Pacific Region. In: Asian Perspectives . 42, No. 1, 2003, ISSN 0066-8435 , pp. 96-128.
- Sue O'Connor, Matthew Spriggs, Peter Veth: Excavation at Lene Hara Cave establishes occupation in East Timor at least 30,000–35,000 years ago. In: Antiquity. 76, No. 291, 2002, ISSN 0003-598X , pp. 45-50.
- Katragadda Paddayya, Peter Bellwood: South and Southeast Asia. In: Barry Cunliffe , Wendy Davies, Colin Renfrew (Eds.): Archeology. The Widening Debate. Oxford University Press for the British Academy, Oxford et al. 2002, ISBN 0-19-726255-4 , pp. 295-334.
- Matthew Spriggs, Sue O'Connor: Vestiges of Early Pre-agricultural Economy in the Landscape of East Timor. Recent Research. In: Anna Karlström, Anna Källén (Ed.): Fishbones and glittering emblems. Southeast Asian archeology 2002. Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities (Östasiatiska museet), Stockholm 2003, ISBN 91-970616-0-3 , pp. 49-58.
- Christopher D. Standish, Marcos García-Diez, Sue O'Connor, Nuno Vasco Oliveira: Hand stencil discoveries at Lene Hara Cave hint at Pleistocene age for the earliest painted art in Timor-Leste , Archaeological Research in Asia, March 18, 2020.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Christopher D. Standish, Marcos García-Diez, Sue O'Connor, Nuno Vasco Oliveira: Hand stencil discoveries at Lene Hara Cave hint at Pleistocene age for the earliest painted art in Timor-Leste , Archaeological Research in Asia, March 18, 2020.
- ^ Kyle Armstrong, Yuki Konishi: Bat call identification from the south coast of Timor-Leste , Worley Parsons Services Pty Ltd., March 2012.
- ^ Sue O'Connor, Matthew Spriggs, Peter Veth: Excavation at Lene Hara Cave establishes occupation in East Timor at least 30,000-35,000 years ago. ( Memento from September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) In: Antiquity. March 2002, 76, 291, p. 45. (PDF; 1.2 MB)
- ^ The unofficial guide to Timor-Leste: Tutuala and the eastern tip
- ^ Scientists find 10,000-year-old stone carvings. on: abc.net.au , February 11, 2011.
Coordinates: 8 ° 24 ′ 30.4 ″ S , 127 ° 17 ′ 47.5 ″ E