Is this cave painting humanity’s oldest story?

[Jovialis]

Indonesian rock art dated to 44,000 years old seems to show mythological figures in a hunting scene.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03826-4

 

[Tamakore]

Interesting, but not surprising. I'm quite willing to believe that the modern humans who arrived in South-East Asia more than 44,000 years ago already had the capacity for story telling and symbolic representation, since this capacity is found in every culture. The alternative hypothesis, that humans dispersed throughout Eurasia and Sahul without this capacity, and then each region independently developed this capacity later through a process of parallel evolution, seems to me to be less likely.