Sure, the African-origin hypothesis is plausible—IMO it was the obvious answer all along. But taking the Indonesian art as “reinforcement” of that hypothesis requires a bit of a logical leap.
Consider the two traditional hypotheses:
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Representational art originated in Africa with the ancestors of modern humans, and spread with their migrations; or
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Representational art originated where we find the earliest examples of it, and spread from there via cultural diffusion.
Hypothesis 2 was considered plausible as long as the earliest examples were from Europe. Finding earlier art in Indonesia doesn’t inherently support hypothesis 1 over hypothesis 2 unless you combine it with the assumption that cultural innovations spreading from Europe is more plausible than innovations spreading from Indonesia. But that assumption isn’t even addressed—it’s just silently taken for granted.
It’s not a leap at all. If hypothesis 1 is correct then you’ll find cave art all over the world because humans were making cave art before they left Africa. There’s been debate over whether Neanderthals were making art as well, seems like they were imo, and they left Africa well before Sapiens did.
Hypothesis 2 was never plausible. It was probably only considered plausible by people with hardly any archeological data who were stuck inside a white-supremacist worldview in 1940. The world has since made some progress disabusing itself of such ideas.
Hypothesis 2 was never plausible.
That’s my point: if 2 was never plausible in the first place, then changing the proposed origin from Europe to Indonesia doesn’t affect the likelihood one way or the other. Saying the Indonesian evidence supports the African hypothesis without explaining why is quietly letting the implied white supremacism off the hook without calling it out.
It’s been called out for decades now. Explaining the situation every time a non-European site predates a European site of the same type would be beating a dead horse.
