Australia's first artists get credit for their work after 28,000
years
Archaeologists have long known that Australia is home to some of the
world's most outstanding and abundant rock art. Now, a chance discovery
has revealed that the art is also among the world's oldest - and that
when it was created, Aborigines were among the most advanced modern
humans.
The discovery was made by Bryce Barker, a member of an international
team excavating a remote site in the Arnhem Land region of the Northern
Territory.
Examining in his laboratory a sliver of granite, which he had dug up
months earlier, Prof. Barker noticed it contained finely drawn charcoal
lines that were subsequently carbon-dated to 28,000 years ago - making
it more than 10,000 years older than the country's previously
oldest-known art. The team has already found evidence that the site - a
massive rock shelter accessible only by helicopter - was occupied 45,000
years ago.
Prof. Barker, from the University of Southern Queensland, believes he
and his colleagues will uncover art dating back that far, which would be
the world's oldest - surpassing even the cave paintings of El Castillo
in northern Spain, recently redated at 40,800 years old. The charcoal
drawing - believed to be part of a "dynamic figure", the oldest known
type of rock art in Arnhem Land - also demonstrates that, contrary to
popular perception, Aborigines of that era were far from primitive, he
said. Archaeologists have found a 35,000-year-old edge-ground axe, a
stone tool not developed elsewhere in the world until much later, at the
site. "When you put that together with the art and Aborigines' early use
of watercraft, you're looking at some of the major first developments in
modern human behaviour, and it's all happening here in Australia," Prof.
Barker said.
Aborigines arrived in Australia from Asia at least 45,000 years ago.
Rock art experts believe they began creating paintings and engravings
almost immediately. But because the art was in exposed rock shelters,
much of the oldest work would have disappeared - unlike in Spain and the
caves at Chauvet, in France, where the paintings were preserved
underground.
Paul Taçon, one of Australia's leading rock art experts, said ochre
sticks dating back more than 40,000 years had been found at numerous
sites around the country. The ochre was ground to a powder and used for
paint.
"What this new find here and the new dating in Spain highlight is
that the potential for making rock art is universal among modern
humans," he said. "And it probably originated neither in Australia nor
Europe, but in Africa a very long time ago.
When people arrived in new places, they immediately began to make
themselves at home and to add a cultural stamp to the landscape. These
two developments also highlight that we're all basically the same. We
have brains that are hard-wired in the same way, and we've been like
this for many thousands of years, engaging in the same sorts of
behaviour."
-The Independent
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