The ancient Austronesian maritime civilization may have carried painted art on its journeys before developing its first Neolithic pottery, according to new study findings.
The Austronesian culture traveled from Easter Island to Madagascar and Taiwan to New Zealand, demonstrating their skill as advanced seafarers of the ancient world. In a recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from The Australian National University (ANU) and Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) describe a 4,000-year-old artifact displaying the Austronesian Painting Tradition (APT).
The find was made on Indonesia’s Wetar Island, at the Huknaur rockshelter, a site known for its prehistoric art, including cave art that has defied conclusive dating attempts.
Roughly 4,200 years ago, the Austronesian people began their journeys across the sea, exploring large portions of their region. Technologically, they developed impressive boats with a focus on stability engineering to master harsh seas and highly efficient sails to travel great distances. Their success in venturing into these regions left them with a reputation as some of history’s greatest seafarers.
The defining feature of these peoples was the shared Austronesian language group, still spoken by some 386 million people across more than 1,200 languages today.
One of the primary methods archaeologists have used to trace how ancient Austronesian culture spread through the region is through traces of pottery. Surprisingly, a painted plaque was found on a preceramic layer, suggesting this intriguing artifact could predate the arrival of ceramic technology in the area, and potentially dates some of the earliest sea voyages to sometime between the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras.
Elements common to the APT art style include geometric designs, small human figures, and the boats for which they are best known. The latest example of this art appears on a stone plaque, covered in a common APT motif: a red concentric circle with radiating sun rays. Archaeologists have found similar pieces in the West Pacific, but this one’s mobility makes it extraordinary.
“This is the first portable example of Austronesian painted art ever found archaeologically,” said lead author Professor Sue O’Connor of ANU. “Portable symbols could travel with people and may have helped communicate shared identities, affiliations and beliefs between island communities. Similar sun-like designs were historically painted on boats and other objects, where they could function as symbols of protection and group identity.”
“This discovery shows that the characteristic sun-ray motif was already part of the APT during the earliest Austronesian expansion into southern Wallacea,” explained co-author Dr Simona Kealy, of the ANU. “These people were extraordinary seafarers, rapidly dispersing across thousands of kilometres of ocean. The Wetar plaque shows that art and shared symbolic traditions were part of this great maritime dispersal from its earliest phases.”
Typically, APT work is discovered on rock shelters and cave walls. While interesting, archaeologists are often confounded by the difficulty in properly dating cave wall art. Typically, such paintings are created with inorganic mineral pigments, which cannot be carbon-dated.
Now, with the first portable object ever discovered bearing the APT style, the researchers can date such a piece for the first time. Their precise results place the object during the Austronesian spread throughout maritime Southeast Asia, sometime between 4,090 and 4,900 years ago.
“This discovery shows that Austronesian pioneers arrived with a compelling ideology represented by the APT paintings, prior to more extended contacts bringing pottery,” said co-author Dr Ceri Shipton of ANU. “People didn’t just carry technologies and possessions when they voyaged to new islands. They carried ideas, identities, and new ways of understanding the world.”
The paper, “4000-Year-Old Painted Plaque from Southeast Indonesia Reveals Austronesian Painting Tradition Preceded Neolithic Pottery,” appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on August 17, 2026.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org.
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