World culture: Archaeologists determined the age of the ancient Australian painting

Scientists determined the age of the oldest at the moment aboriginal paintings from Australia.

According to archaeologists, they have been made about 28 000 years ago. Scientists’ article is accepted for publication in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Bruce Baker, an archaeologist at the University of Southern Queensland, found a rock shelter Nawarla Gabarnmang about a year ago, however, the results of the dating have been known recently.

The scientist managed to find pictures of animals and humans, which were made with carbon pigments. This is the very fact which helped to carry out the dating based on the determination of the ratio of isotopes’ pigments of the carbon. According to Baker, pictures from Nawarla Gabarnmang are the oldest definitely dated samples of a cave painting, found in Australia.

At the moment the oldest cave paintings in the world are images of ocher disks found in the cave of El Castillo in Spain. Their age, of about 41 thousands of years, allowed some archaeologists to consider them as the handiwork of the Neanderthals. Archaeologists have used other method of dating to determine the age of Spanish paintings. It is based on determination of the isotopes’ ratio of uranium and thorium in the calcite patina covering the cave painting.

Before, French archaeologists have discovered that prehistoric artists have been able to express the movement in the cave painting through the introduction of elements of the animation.