Early Aussie Tattoos Match Rock Art Discovery - June 2, 2008
Body art was all the rage in early Australia, as it was in many other parts of the ancient world, and now a new study reports that elaborate and distinctive designs on the skin of indigenous Aussies repeated characters and motifs found on rock art and all sorts of portable objects, ranging from toys to pipes. The study not only illustrates the link between body art, such as tattoos and intentional scarring, with cultural identity, but it also suggests that study of this imagery may help to unravel mysteries about where certain groups traveled in the past, what their values and rituals were, and how they related to other cultures.
"Distinctive design conventions can be considered markers of social interaction so, in a way (they are) a cultural signature of sorts that archaeologists can use to understand ways people were interacting in the past," author Liam Brady of Monash University's Center for Australian Indigenous Studies, told Discovery News.
For the study, published in the latest issue of the journal Antiquity, Brady documented rock art drawings; images found on early turtle shell, stone and wood objects, such as bamboo tobacco pipes and drums; and images that were etched onto the human body through a process called scarification. "In a way, a scarred design could be interpreted as a tattoo," Brady said. "It was definitely a distinctive form of body ornamentation and it was permanent since the design was cut into the skin. Evidence for scarification is primarily via (19th century) anthropologists -- mainly A.C. Haddon -- who took black and white photographs of some designs, as well as drawing others into his notebooks in the late 1800's," he added.
Both Haddon and Brady focused their attention on a region called the Torres Strait. This is a collection of islands in tropical far northeastern Queensland. The islands lie between Australia and the Melanesian island of New Guinea. Although people were living in the Torres Strait as early as 9,000 years ago, when sea levels were lower and a land bridge connected Australia with New Guinea, archaeological exploration of the area only really began with Haddon's 19th century work. Since body art, rock art, wooden objects and other tangible items have a relatively short shelf life, Haddon's collections and data represent some of the earliest confirmed findings for the region.
Brady determined that within the body art, rock art and objects, four primary motifs often repeated: a fish headdress, a snake, a four-pointed star, and triangle variants. The fish headdress, usually made of a turtle shell decorated with feathers and rattles, was worn during ceremonies and has, in at least one instance, been linked to a "cult of the dead." The triangular designs, on the other hand, were often scarred onto women's skin and likely indicated these individuals were in mourning. Analysis of the materials found that two basic groups -- horticulturalists and hunter-gatherers -- inhabited the Torres Strait during its early history. Aboriginal people at Cape York, a peninsula close to Australia, had "a different artistic system in operation, which did not incorporate many designs from Papua New Guinea," Brady said.
Based on land locations where the body art and object imagery were found, as well as the nature of the designs, Brady concludes that the Cape York residents were the hunter-gatherers, while groups in more northerly locations within Torres Strait appear to have been horticulturalists. Since imagery mixed and matched more among the early farmers, Brady concludes they enjoyed kinship links, and engaged in extensive trade, with Papua New Guinea groups. In the future, similar studies could help to identify cultural groups in other regions, while also revealing their social interactions. Such studies could prove particularly useful for other parts of Australia and New Zealand, where tattooing and body art, as well as totems -- protection entities often depicted with colorful imagery -- were common.
Recently, for example, the Field Museum in Chicago returned the human remains of 14 Maori native New Zealanders back to their country of origin. The remains are now at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa. Included in the collection of mandibles, crania and other bones is "one preserved head with facial tattoos," according to a Field Museum announcement. In an act of repatriation, nine tattooed Maori heads were also recently gifted to Te Papa by Scotland's Aberdeen Museum. Te Taru White, a Maori specialist at Te Papa, said the "ancestors" made "the long journey home to New Zealand and to their people." The heads are now in a consecrated, sacred space within the New Zealand museum, where they may be studied and researched further. In Brady's case, his work was undertaken as part of collaborative research projects initiated by certain Torres Strait and Aboriginal communities.
Electrical Storm Over Sydney Harbour (Photos) March 4, 2007
Australia's coast battered by tsunamis ABC - February 21, 2007
Australia's coastline has felt the impact of almost 50 tsunamis in the past 150 years ...
Australia: Whale fossil sports fierce teeth BBC - August 16, 2006
Savage ancient whale was 'marine T-rex', researchers say.
Australia's north slammed into its middle ABC - August 16, 2006
Ancient human footprints found in Australia MSNBC - July 28, 2006
Researchers believe prints were made approximately 20,000 years ago
Australian 'Nessie' fossils found BBC - July 27, 2006
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Found! World's oldest caves News in Science - July 26, 2006
The Jenolan caves west of Sydney date back some 340 million years, making
them the oldest known open caves in the world, Australian geologists say. The oldest previous dating for an open cave was around 90 million years. In geological terms, 340 million years is a very long time. To put it into context, the Blue Mountains began to form 100 million years ago; dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago, and Tasmania was joined to the mainland as recently as 10,000 years ago. The discovery opens the possibility that there could be evidence of other ancient geological events in the caves that scientists haven't looked for yet. For example, the researchers think the clay in the cave was formed when volcanic ash entered.
Jenolan Caves
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Weird Australia Rocks Are Earliest Signs of Life, Study Says National Geographic - June 8, 2006
Ancient rocks 'built by microbes' BBC - June 7, 2006
Aboriginal people built water tunnels Live Science - March 15, 2006
Earliest human footprints in Australia News in Science - December 21, 2005
At tens of thousands of years old the find is the largest group
of human footprints from the Pleistocene era ever found.
'Fires wiped out' ancient mammals BBC - July 8, 2005
Climate wiped out mega-marsupials BBC - May 31, 2005
Sea monsters found in desert News in Science - May 25, 2005
Australia is emerging as a missing link in the evolution
of giant prehistoric marine reptiles, says a scientist who
has discovered what may be a new species of plesiosaur.
Extinct Australian "Lion" National Geographic - March 2004
Two million years ago bizarre creatures roamed the Australian continent
Ancient Art Appears Like Magic August 2003 - Unknown Country
Prehistoric art in Australia that is invisible to the naked eye is
being discovered by digital cameras and image-enhancing
computers. Archeologists take pictures of blank walls and
enhance them, and ancient images magically appear.
1.8 Million-Year-Old Hominid Jaw Found National Geographic - February 2003
Mega-monsters unearthed in outback death trap
The marsupial lion was Australia's largest carnivorous mammal. A treasure trove of fossilized bones of prehistoric marsupial lions, giant kangaroos and a wombat the size of a small car has been unearthed in caves on the Nullarbor Plain.
October 10, 2001 - Reuters - Brisbane
The biggest dinosaur ever found in Australia has been unearthed on a sheep property and may prove to be a unique Australian Sauropod, paleontologists said.
Sauropods, which lived 95 million years ago, were gigantic, four-legged herbivores and are characterized by extremely long necks and tails, and disproportionately small heads.
It was previously believed that the Australian Sauropod belonged to a group spread through the ancient super continent of Gondwana which incorporated South America, Africa, India, Australia and Antarctica.
Salisbury said the dinosaur, nicknamed Elliot, might prove to be part of a unique Australian group of Sauropods.
Elliot was discovered by a sheep farmer in 1999. He found a part of the dinosaur's thighbone on his property near Winton in western Queensland state after heavy rain washed away top-soil.
Scientists visited the farm in 2001 to inspect the piece of thighbone displayed in the farmer's house and have since found bones spread over a 2.4-mile radius.
Elliot is the largest dinosaur ever discovered in Australia and is believed to have measured between 52 and 69 feet in length, stood 29 feet tall and weighed between 22 and 30 tons.
But scientists have unearthed only about five percent of "Elliot," including part of the thighbone, ribs and portions of the backbone. They believe some of the smaller, fragile parts of the skeleton such as the skull could be buried deep underground.
"It could turn out to be the most complete Sauropod ever found in Australia, apart from the largest dinosaur we've ever found," Salisbury said. Queensland Museum director Ian Galloway said it would take up to five years to extract another 500 bones which make up "Elliot." The exact location of the fossil find has been kept secret to avoid vandalism.
June 2001 - AP
The number 42 may have been Douglas Adams's cryptic solution to life, the universe and everything, but the answer to one of the most important questions in Australian paleontology is 46 - 46,000 years ago, that is.
At that time, argues a team of mammalogists, prehistorians and dating experts, the big guys of the Australian outback - known as the megafauna - became extinct.
A new paper to be published in the prestigious international journal Science may also have important implications for an understanding of when people arrived and the transformation of Australia's vegetation.
The scientists have dated 28 sites across the continent and claim that because 46,000 years ago was a relatively mild period, extreme aridity was unlikely to have caused the mass disappearance of Australia's largest animals. Another alternative, say the scientists, is that a "blitzkrieg" of human hunting wiped out the megafauna.
For millions of years before the new date the continent had been inhabited by savage and giant creatures, some considered among the most powerful reptilian and mammalian carnivores to have lived.
The marsupial lion, Thylacoleo carnifex, may have weighed up to 160 kilograms and some say was comparable in ferocity to a saber-toothed tiger.
Dr Steve Wroe of the University of Sydney recently wrote of the marsupial lion: "Their meat-butchering carnassials [cheek shearing teeth] were among the largest of any known mammalian predator, living or extinct.
"In terms of its dentition, many scientists now believe that T.carnifex was the most specialized mammalian predator of all time."
Its prey, the diprotodon, was the largest marsupial and was at least as big as a rhinoceros. An enormous wombat known as Phascolonus gigas was another of the extinct megafauna. One of the meanest of them was the Thunderbird (also known by the apocalyptic nickname of the Demon Duck of Doom), which weighed as much as 500 kilograms and was either a deadly carnivore or an over-engineered vegetarian.
But no one has been sure about when or why these beasts were relegated to history.The new paper puts the date at 46,400 years ago and, according to one of the authors, director of the South Australian Museum, Dr Tim Flannery, a reappraisal may be needed concerning the date when humans arrived in Australia.
Dr Flannery is the nation's leading proponent of the idea that people wiped out the megafauna and that they did so at lightning speed - perhaps as quickly as 500 years after arriving on the continent.<
"We have finally got a date for megafauna extinction in Australia - we finally know," he said.
He also said that the extinction of the megafauna would have had a big impact on vegetation - a huge fuel load would have built up once the giant browsers were gone.
But a research fellow at the Australian Museum and the University of Wollongong, Dr Richard Fullagar, said the date of extinction was not resolved, nor was the cause.
Dr Fullagar works at Cuddie Springs in northern NSW, where he claims megafauna appear to have survived until about 30,000 years ago.
August 27, 1999 - BBC
This is the face of the first known American, Lucia
The first Americans were descended from Australian aborigines, according to evidence in a new BBC documentary.
The skulls suggest faces like those of Australian aborigines
The program, Ancient Voices, shows that the dimensions of prehistoric skulls found in Brazil match those of the aboriginal people of Australia and Melanesia. Other evidence suggests that these first Americans were later massacred by invaders from Asia.
Until now, native Americans were believed to have descended from Asian ancestors who arrived over a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska and then migrated across the whole of north and south America. The land bridge was formed 11,000 years ago during the ice age, when sea level dropped.
However, the new evidence shows that these people did not arrive in an empty wilderness. Stone tools and charcoal from the site in Brazil shows evidence of human habitation as long ago as 50,000 years. The site is at Serra Da Capivara in remote northeast Brazil. This area is now inhabited by the descendants of European settlers and African slaves who arrived just 500 years ago.
But cave paintings found here provided the first clue to the existence of a much older people.
The costumes and rituals shown in rock art survived Terra de Fuego
Images of giant armadillos, which died out before the last ice age, show the artists who drew them lived before even the natives who greeted the Europeans.
These Asian people have facial features described as mongoloid. However, skulls dug from a depth equivalent to 9,000 to 12,000 years ago are very different.
Walter Neves, an archaeologist from the University of Sao Paolo, has taken extensive skull measurements from dozens of skulls, including the oldest, a young woman who has been named Lucia.
"The measurements show that Lucia was anything but mongoloid," he says.
Walter Neves has measured hundreds of skulls
The next step was to reconstruct a face from Lucia's skull. First, a CAT scan of the skull was done, to allow an accurate working model to be made.
Then a forensic artist, Richard Neave from the University of Manchester, UK, created a face for Lucia. The result was surprising: "It has all the features of a negroid face," says Dr Neave.
Lucia skull is 12,000 years old
The skull dimensions and facial features match most closely the native people of Australia and Melanesia. These people date back to about 60,000 years, and were themselves descended from the first humans, who left Africa about 100,000 years ago.
But how could the early Australians have traveled more than 13,500 kilometers (8,450 miles) at that time? The answer comes from more cave paintings, this time from the Kimberley, a region at the northern tip of Western Australia.
Here, Grahame Walsh, an expert on Australian rock art, found the oldest painting of a boat anywhere in the world. The style of the art means it is at least 17,000 years old, but it could be up to 50,000 years old. And the crucial detail is the high prow of the boat. This would have been unnecessary for boats used in calm, inland waters. The design suggests it was used on the open ocean.
Fantastic voyage
Archaeologists speculate that such an incredible sea voyage, from Australia to Brazil, would not have been undertaken knowingly but by accident.
Just three years ago, five African fishermen were caught in a storm and a few weeks later were washed up on the shores of South America. Two of the fishermen died, but three made it alive.
But if the first Americans had drifted from Australia, where are their descendants now? Again, the skulls suggest an answer.
The shape of the skulls changes between 9,000 and 7,000 years ago from being exclusively negroid to exclusively mongoloid. Combined with rock art evidence of increasing violence at this time, it appears that the mongoloid people from the north invaded and wiped out the original Americans.
Fuegan Christina Calderon may be one of the few surviving descendents of the first Americans
The only evidence of any survivors comes from Terra del Fuego, the islands at the remotest southern tip of South America.
The pre-European Fuegeans, who lived stone age-style lives until this century, show hybrid skull features that could have resulted from intermarrying between mongoloid and negroid people. Their rituals and traditions also bear some resemblance to the ancient rock art in Brazil.
The identity of the first Americans is an emotive and controversial question. But the evidence from Brazil, and a handful of people who still live at the very tip of South America, suggests that the Americas have been home to a greater diversity of humans than previously thought - and for much longer.
In 1961 it was observed that the oldest secure radiocarbon date, in undoubted association with human activities, was from a site at Cape Martin in S.A., dated to less than 9,000 years ago.
In 1972 claim of 16,000 years had been doubled by a series of nine dates for occupation sites round Lake Mungo in western NSW which ranged from c.24,000 to c.32,000 years ago". Elsewhere, dates approaching 35,000 years ago were published for the southwest Western Australian site of Devil's Lair, and in 1981 an antiquity of 38,000 years was claimed for artifact-bearing layers at Upper Swan River. Whereas the known antiquity for humans in Australia quadrupled between 1960 and 1980, this increase in antiquity has leveled off in the present decade. Claims in the past 10 years or so for human sites older than c.35,000 have been few.
In the 1990s however, two sites in the Northern Territory have pushed the dates for initial colonization further back. Malakunanja II and Nauwalabila I (both dated using thermo luminescence dating have recorded the oldest dates so far. Malakunanja II had nine dates ranging from 100 years ago to 61,000 years. (Roberts RG, Jones R, Smith MA 1990, 1990a). Nauwalabila I had five dates, the three oldest ranging from 30,000BP to 60,000BP (Roberts et al 1990, 1994). Therefore it has been put forward by Roberts et al (1994:615) that "initial human colonization of the northern part of Australia took place between 53,000 and 60,000 years ago.
Therefore, using reliable dates and dating techniques, derived from archaeological evidence, dates for the initial colonization of Australia have been put forward approximately 60,000 BP.
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