July 2, 2003 — Australian scientists on Tuesday announced the discovery of a cave containing scores of rock paintings up to 4,000 years old, calling it one of the most significant finds ever of Aboriginal art.
"It's like an ancient world that time forgot," said Paul Tacon, a museum anthropologist who led the expedition.
The cave, known as Eagle's Reach, holds 203 paintings, stencils and prints in "pristine condition" depicting humans and god-like human/animal composites, birds, lizards and marsupials, he said.
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There are life-size, delicately drawn eagles, kangaroos and an extremely rare depiction of a wombat, Tacon said. There are also stencils of hands and an axe. The images were painted in 11 layers during a period from around 2000 B.C. to the early 1800s.
"The stencils were done by placing hands or objects against the wall and blowing a mouthful of pigment on and around the object. Then when the object was removed a negative impression was left behind," Tacon told Discovery News.
"The modern chalk-like material ... is kalonite or white pipe clay which does look quite similar to chalk," he said.
When asked why the drawings looked so recent, Tacon said, "Because it's a north-facing and deep shelter, that is well protected from rain and sun. Its remoteness has also protected it from vandals and unintentional damage in recent times."
The paintings were kept secret for eight years after a hiker stumbled upon the cave in rugged national parkland near Sydney in 1995, officials at the Australian Museum said.
The inaccessibility of the area in Wollemi National Park kept researchers from conducting a full-scale investigation of the find until May, the museum said.
The exact location of the site — described as a rock shelter 12 meters (40 feet) long, six meters deep and one to two meters high — was being kept secret to prevent damage by vandals or sightseers.
"We've never seen anything quite like this combination of rare representations in so many layers," Tacon said in a statement.
Tacon speculated as to why the Aboriginal people made the drawings. "...Some are definitely of a spiritual nature and some are of food animals and maybe more of a secular nature," he said. "The hand stencils are more like a signature or statment that a person left at the site they may also express a person's relationship to the place. "
The remote Eagle's Reach site was an important place for Aborigines to visit and mark with imagery, he said, something confirmed by the family groups that sometimes visited the site.
"For instance, there is evidence of domestic activities at the site and there are a few child hand stencils. We can only speculate on what exactly motivated people to visit this rugged spot — was it the best camping place within a day's reach of other localities for long-distance travellers? Was there a spiritual association with the site and/or larger landscape? Whatever the case, people must have visited dozens of times and on many such occasions they were compelled to leave imagery behind," Tacon said.
New South Wales Premier Bob Carr said the "remarkable" discovery confirmed the richness of Aboriginal culture and spiritual life at a time when civilization was blossoming around the world.
"This reminds us 4,000 years ago, when you had civilization flourishing in Mesopotamia, when you had the power of Egypt, before China was united, while Stonehenge was being built, we had Aboriginal people in these lands, on the outskirts of the Sydney basin," he said.
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