SYDNEY (AFP) - Aboriginal rock art found in remote Australia has been dated at 28,000 years old, experts said Monday, prompting new speculation that indigenous communities were among the world’s most advanced.
Archaeologists picked up the fragment in inaccessible wilderness in Arnhem Land in the country’s north a year ago, and recent carbon dating of its charcoal drawing has placed it among some of the oldest art on the planet.
“One of the things that makes this little fragment of art unique is that it is drawn in charcoal... which means we could directly date it,” said Bryce Barker, who found and first analysed the granite rock.
Barker said given it was one of the oldest known pieces of rock art on earth, it showed that Aboriginal people were responsible for some of the earliest examples.
Barker said the find ranks among rock art sites such as France’s Chauvet caves dated at older than 30,000 years and caves in northern Spain now thought to be 40,000 years old.
“The fact remains that any rock art that is older than 20,000 years is very unique around the world,” said Barker, a professor at the University of Southern Queensland.
“So it makes this amongst some of the oldest art in the world.