What if care is the oldest root of being human? Thirty-one thousand years ago, in a cave in the mountains of Borneo, a community performed the oldest known successful major operation and nursed a child back to life over the decade that followed. This is where compassion begins.
25-Min Documentary · Nov 2026Expedition Film
Technology
VR Experience
In developmentFeature Film
In developmentExhibitionIn 2020, during a long search for the world's oldest cave art led by Dr. Maxime Aubert, the discovery itself was made by his student, the late Tom Maloney. His patient work in the cave floor turned up something no one was looking for: a careful, deliberate burial, in a remote cave we now call Liang Tebo.
The skeleton was a young person, around 14 at the time of injury, whose lower-left leg had been surgically amputated and then fully healed. The smooth, infection-free bone is the mark of skilled surgery. That it kept growing for years afterward tells us a community carried and cared for the child long after. Published in Nature, it is the oldest known successful major medical operation in human history.
And it does not stand alone. Around the burial, the cave walls hold some of the world's oldest hand stencils, and ochre was found in Tebo 1's own mouth, which links the grave to art and ritual. A single cave holding evidence of surgery, art, and burial marks a turning point in the human story.
Surviving a childhood amputation and living into adulthood took more than a skilled hand. It took a community that chose to stay, and to carry one of its own for years.
Tebo 1's story rises from a land of firsts, where some of the oldest art on Earth still glows on cave walls. Against the cold logic of survival of the fittest, here is a life that an entire community chose to hold up.
Together, the healed bone and the hand stencils nearby say something simple. Our humanity was born of a choice to care for one another. This is the genesis of compassion.
At the heart of it is a child who lived 31,000 years ago. And for the people rediscovering and telling their story, the care that kept Tebo 1 alive is not an idea to be argued. They have lived it, from both sides.
An archaeologist and geochemist at Griffith University, Maxime is one of the world's foremost authorities on dating the deep past. By pioneering uranium-series dating of cave art, he established the age of the oldest figurative paintings ever found, work that moved the origins of art out of Europe and into the islands of Southeast Asia. It was his long search for humanity's earliest images that first brought the team to Liang Tebo. And he grew up beside the same truth Tebo 1 carries: a father who lost a leg at twelve. For him, this science was never only academic.
Imagined reconstruction.
The child at the heart of it all. A leg lost below the knee in childhood, 31,000 years ago, and bone that kept growing for ten more years afterward, proof that Tebo 1 was carried and cared for by a community long after the surgery. Ochre in the mouth and staining across the teeth may be among the earliest traces of plant medicine ever found. Newer DNA analysis hints at an endocrine difference, and a body that may have been intersex: a person who did not fit the mold. The oldest proof we have that to be human is to care. Every part of this work exists to carry that story forward.
An engineer-turned–National Geographic Explorer, storyteller, and below-knee amputee, Albert has built his career revealing lost worlds without disturbing them, using LiDAR and remote sensing to lift hidden histories from the dark, from the Maya cities beneath the jungle to the Holy Lands, across series like Lost Cities with Albert Lin. The same tools now bring Tebo 1's cave to light. He carries Tebo 1's exact loss, a leg below the knee, in 2016, and has known care from the other side: when his young son Charlie's life hung by a thread, family and caregivers carried him back. For Albert, the handprints around Tebo 1 are his own community on the cave wall, the genesis of compassion.
"My own community became my hand stencils on the cave wall."
Dr. Albert LinNational Geographic Explorer & Storyteller
"The story of Tebo 1's world is written on the walls of these caves, and there is so much yet to be found."
Dr. Maxime AubertWho dated the world's oldest known rock art
A roughly four-week field season, run as one integrated operation with science and storytelling moving together from the first river mile to the last scan. Staged out of Balikpapan, the team drives to the river head, travels two days by canoe to Liang Tebo, then portages deeper into the landscape to the unexplored high karst of Tondoyan, carrying everything it needs to stay self-sufficient far beyond roads or rescue.
From the river head, two days by canoe carry the team and its gear deep into the Sangkulirang–Mangkalihat karst to Liang Tebo, far beyond any road or signal. This is the isolation that has kept the story untouched for 31,000 years.
Five days at the discovery site. Terrestrial LiDAR and photogrammetry build a millimetre-accurate 3D archive of Liang Tebo, while drone-LiDAR survey grids strip the canopy off the surrounding karst to guide on-foot recon of new cave systems no one has entered.
A two-to-three-day river portage pushes deeper into the landscape to Tondoyan, the highest karst formation in the region and one of its least explored.
Two weeks exploring the vast cave systems of Tondoyan, dark mouths visible from across the valley but never entered, searching for the new rock art and burial chambers that could carry Tebo 1's story across the wider karst.
The team runs the river back out, carrying redundant copies of the data the whole way. What leaves is a permanent spatial archive of two of the world's most significant prehistoric landscapes, the foundation for film and for the case for UNESCO World Heritage protection.
Conducted with BRIN and the Dayak custodian communities, and screened in-region first. Indicative field plan; exact dates and durations depend on river conditions, weather, and permits. Imagery is AI-generated concept art for TEBO 1.
A single LiDAR scan serves both halves of this project. It searches the karst for caves no one has found, and it records Liang Tebo in photoreal 3D so the rest of the world can step inside.
Forest canopyLiDAR · caves revealed
Drag the drone. Aerial LiDAR sees through the canopy to the bare limestone, revealing cave openings no one has entered. Highlighted: potential cave openings. Concept visualization.
From that LiDAR data, Visualskies reconstructs Liang Tebo and its 31,000-year-old world in photoreal 3D, the foundation for the documentary and the immersive experiences that carry it to everyone.
The same LiDAR and 3D toolkit behind Lost Cities with Albert Lin, refined over fifteen years with Visualskies and now turned on Liang Tebo.
Tebo 1’s world, the Sangkulirang–Mangkalihat karst of East Kalimantan, is being eaten away by logging, mining, and palm-oil monocropping. Without action, the cave, its burial, and the ancient art our species left there could be lost within years.
Tebo 1’s home holds more ancient rock art than anywhere else in Southeast Asia, including some of the oldest figurative paintings ever found on Earth, dated in these very caves by our own Dr. Maxime Aubert. It is also counted among the ten most endangered karst landscapes in the world.
Its limestone is hunted for cement, its forest cleared for oil-palm monocropping, coal, and logging, with pressure now intensifying as Indonesia builds its new capital, Nusantara, nearby. More than 40% of the karst across this part of Borneo already sits under mining concession. Quarry a single tower and the caves, the burials, and the art inside them are gone for good.
Nothing here is done to the region; it is done with it. The work is co-designed with BRIN, Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency, with Indonesian scholars, and with the Dayak custodian communities whose ancestral land this is, with consent first and screenings in the region before anywhere else.
So the vision works on two fronts. The first is to carry this story of care to the world at a moment it is badly needed: hard proof, written in bone and ochre, that our origins are good, and a spark for new stories of what we can be to one another. The second is to turn that global attention back onto the karst itself, so the spotlight becomes a shield: strengthening the case for UNESCO World Heritage protection and backing the Indigenous and local stewardship already fighting to hold this landscape against mining, logging, and monocropping.
Sources: UNESCO World Heritage Centre tentative list (2015); Aubert et al., Nature (2018, dating the karst’s rock art); The Nature Conservancy; Mongabay.
This November's expedition is step one. From it we create a 25-minute documentary and an immersive VR experience. That proof of concept catalyzes the full ambition: a feature film, a traveling exhibition, and a conservation initiative, together reframing human origins as a story of care.
Supported by the November expedition — with anticipated support from the National Geographic Society, currently in review.
A cinematic short film in English and Bahasa Indonesia, shot on the November expedition. The proof of concept, and the seed for a feature-length telling. Inside the expedition →
A filming expedition · Nov 2026
Built directly from the expedition's photoreal LiDAR scans, a VR world that carries this remote, threatened landscape into living rooms, so any family can step into Tebo 1's story. Step inside →
Step inside · VR
The full cinematic telling of Tebo 1's story, from the first surgery by firelight to the hand stencils on the wall, expanding the short into a feature for the world's screens. Open the flipbook →
A walk-in pavilion of shipping containers, set down in plazas from New York to Jakarta, carrying the conversation Tebo 1 began, our instinct to care for one another, into the heart of modern life, when we need it most. Step inside →
Tap any frame to open the full-screen flipbook, then scroll or swipe through the imagined feature, from the first surgery to the hand stencils on the wall. On a phone, turn it sideways for the full-screen view.
A walk-in pavilion of shipping containers, set down in city plazas from New York to Jakarta and finally home to Borneo. It carries two deep-time firsts into the middle of our cities, the oldest known successful surgery and the oldest figurative art our species has ever found, both from these same islands, to bring one idea where we need it most: that being human begins with caring for one another.
TEBO 1 came together as a rare convergence: the scientists who found Tebo 1, the team who can rebuild its world, and the people who carry its meaning. Three groups that each arrived with exactly what this story needed.
The scientists who found Tebo 1, and the Dayak communities who hold the land and its meaning.
The senior scientist whose search for the world's oldest cave art brought the team to these caves, and a world authority on dating the deep past. Raised by a father who is an amputee.
The bioarchaeologist who recognized the healed amputation, the physical proof of skilled surgery and long-term care.
One of Indonesia's foremost rock-art scholars; holds the permits, institutional trust, and the bridge to Dayak custodians.
Indonesian artist and documentarian present at the excavation; interprets the story on its own cultural terms.
The custodians whose landscape, knowledge, and consent anchor every part of this work.
The storytellers carrying Tebo 1 to the world across film, immersive technology, and impact.
The project's storyteller, developing the full vision, a National Geographic Explorer and a below-knee amputee who shares Tebo 1's exact injury.
Documentary director and cinematographer with a decade behind the camera on blue-chip natural-history and expedition series: National Geographic, Disney+, BBC One, PBS, Animal Planet, and Discovery's Shark Week. Director and creative director on Iceland: The Realm of Magic (co-created with Albert Lin), camera on the BBC’s Our Changing Planet, and lead and underwater DP across Mysterious Creatures and multiple Shark Week films. He is now executive producer and director of photography on the feature documentary The Boy and the Butterfly, in development with National Geographic and Disney+.
Executive producer and impact strategist; two decades building purpose-driven, fundable storytelling.
The spatial-capture studio rebuilding the cave, and its 31,000-year-old world, from light.
LiDAR and CGI lead, with five years scanning beside Albert on Lost Cities, and founder of a London spatial-capture studio that fuses terrestrial LiDAR, drone photogrammetry, and Unreal Engine into millimetre-accurate photoreal 3D. The same pipeline that preserves the real cave rebuilds the lost world around it.
"…major implications for our understanding of the history of medicine."
Help carry a 31,000-year-old story of care into the future.
With strong interest from the National Geographic Society, and a proposal currently under review, TEBO 1 is building the coalition to realize its full vision across film, immersive technology, science, and conservation. We are seeking partners and supporters to bring this story, and the genesis of compassion, to the world.
Skeletal and amputation imagery: Maloney et al., Nature (2022). Field, cave, rock-art, and wildlife photography courtesy of the Liang Tebo discovery and Sangkulirang–Mangkalihat rock-art research teams (photographers including Tom Maloney, India Dilkes-Hall, Dr. Melandri Vlok, and Kinez Riza). Reconstructions of the deep past, cinematic frames, exhibition concepts, and LiDAR visuals are AI-generated concept art created for TEBO 1 and are illustrative. Portrait of Dr. Lin courtesy of National Geographic (Lost Cities). Full per-image credits available on request.
