From monstersandcritics.com
Painting believed to be Australia's oldest Aboriginal rock art
May 31, 2010, 7:56 GMT
Sydney - An Aboriginal painting of two giant emu-like birds could be Australia's oldest rock art, archaeologists said Monday.
The red ochre painting found in the far north of the continent could date back 40,000 years to the earliest days of its settlement.
Archaeologist Ben Gunn said Genyornis, the species depicted in the painting, became extinct 40,000 years ago.
'The details on this painting indicate that it was done by someone who knew that animal very well,' Gunn told the national broadcaster ABC. 'Either the painting is 40,000 years old, which is when science thinks Genyornis disappeared, or alternatively, the Genyornis lived a lot longer than science has been able to establish.'
Gunn said that near where the Genyornis depictions were found in Arnhem Land were paintings of other extinct animals, including the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger; the giant echidna; and giant kangaroo.
Technical difficulties and uncertainties make dating Australia's early rock art difficult, but Wes Miller, head of the Jawoyn Association, said the discovery confirmed his tribe had lived in the area for tens of thousands of years.
'It verifies that the Jawoyn people were living in this country for a very, very long time,' Miller said. 'People say it, but once again, this is clearly a demonstration of how long Jawoyn people have been in this country and other indigenous groups. It's great from that point of view. It's pretty exciting stuff.'
Here is today's update:
From australiangeographic.com.au
Bird rock art could be world's oldest
By: Emma Young | June-3-2010
A rock painting that appears to be of a bird that went extinct about 40,000 years ago has been discovered in northern Australia.
The red ochre painting was found in southwest Arnhem Land by a member of the Jawoyn Association, which represents the local traditional owners of the land. When Robert Gunn, an archaeologist brought in to document rock art in the area, saw the painting he immediately thought it looked like Genyornis, an emu-like, big-beaked, thick-legged bird that went extinct along with other Australian megafauna between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago.
"But I bit my tongue, and sent it off to a recognised authority, palaeontologist Peter Murray in Darwin, to see what he thought. When he confirmed that it probably was Genyornis, it was pretty exciting," Robert says.
Robert thinks there are two possible interpretations: either this is among the oldest rock paintings in the world, or Genyornis went extinct later than anybody thinks.
Age old question
But there's no good archaeological or palaeontological evidence that Genyornis survived longer than about 40,000 years ago, says Bruno David, an archaeologist and rock art specialist at Monash University in Melbourne, who has seen photos of the painting and who has worked in the region. "If this is Genyornis, then it has to be more than 40,000 years old," he says.
Robert is now planning to record the site in much more detail, and next year Bruno and his team will excavate the area thoroughly. A rock fall created the exposed face on which the painting was made. By studying buried samples from beneath the fallen rock, the team should be able to work out the age of the rock face. If it is older than 40,000 years, this won't prove that the painting is that old, but it will support the idea that it could be.
Some rock art specialists strongly suspect that the painting is younger. The oldest pigment found on a rock anywhere in Australia is 28,000 years old, but the image is so covered with dust and other rocky accretions, it's impossible to know what it looked like.
The Genyornis site is a shallow shelter and most such paintings in Australia are thought to be less than about 5,000 years old; older ones are thought to have been eroded away by weather. The Chauvet artworks, in contrast, are deep inside a cave that was sealed for more than 20,000 years. However, some of the sandstone in Arnhem Land does have the advantage of being extremely hard and durable.
Cautious optimism
Bruno says it's important to be cautious. The features of the painted bird match the features of the extinct Genyornis very closely, but this might be a coincidence, he says. "It's possible that at some time in the past, people were painting animals that didn't necessarily match living species - or that the bird wasn't a physical bird, but an animal that was part of the local, ancestral Jawoyn Dreaming beliefs," he says. And if this is the case, the painting could have been made at any time in the past.
But either way it's exciting, he says. "If it's Genyornis, then it's of extreme significance. If not, it's very significant because it tells us something about the way people understood their landscapes."
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