In a network of rock shelters along the Kimberley, right at the tip of Western Australia, there are paintings thousands of years old. A gallery of echidnas, goanna, fish, yams, hand prints, silhouettes, stencilled boomerangs and lots of kangaroos.
Unlike the paintings themselves, the team found these nests can be reliably dated, giving for the first time a high-quality estimate of Australia’s oldest rock art: between 13,000 and 17,500 years old. The results were published inDamien Finch / Supplied Mud wasps and humans have many of the same requirements for a home: protection from the beating sun and cover from the flooding rains of the Kimberley’s wet season. Hence, the same rock shelters that contain rock art also contain the nests of mud wasps; so many that the original artists often simply painted over them.Mark Jones / Supplied
The team spent years building trust with the traditional owners and practising their technique, aware they would get only one shot.
Stone age paintings are interesting.
This is true Australian history with ancestry of them right here . Not the appropriation of foreign White Anglo culture, people, and their flag being shamelessly labelled as Australian!