Lene Hara Cave
A line drawing, not a photograph of this site — generated artwork.
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The only Pleistocene-dated petroglyph faces in island Southeast Asia, spotted by torchlight in 2009
The main cave of a cluster of solutional caves near Tutuala, inside Nino Konis Santana National Park at Timor-Leste's eastern tip. Excavations trace human occupation back some 35,000 years, and the walls carry red-ochre paintings of boats, human figures and hand stencils. In 2009, researchers searching for giant-rat fossils noticed stylised human faces engraved high in the cave — one framed by rays, dated by uranium-series to around 10,000–12,000 years, the only Pleistocene-dated petroglyphs in island Southeast Asia.
The art
- ◦ Engraved sun-ray face
- ◦ Red-ochre boat paintings
- ◦ Pleistocene hand stencils
How it was made
How we know its age
Rock art carries no signature and no date. These are the methods that put an age on this site. How these methods work →
Plan a Visit
Sources
- 1.Lene Hara Cave — Wikipedia
- 2.Faces of the ancestors revealed: discovery and dating of a Pleistocene-age petroglyph in Lene Hara Cave, East Timor — Antiquity
Further reading
- Lene Hara Cave — Don's Maps