The School of Earth Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Lettuce Create, Strathpine, Queensland, Australia.
Nat Hum Behav. 2021 Mar;5(3):310-318. doi: 10.1038/s41562-020-01041-0. Epub 2021 Feb 22.
Naturalistic depictions of animals are a common subject for the world's oldest dated rock art, including wild bovids in Indonesia and lions in France's Chauvet Cave. The oldest known Australian Aboriginal figurative rock paintings also commonly depict naturalistic animals but, until now, quantitative dating was lacking. Here, we present 27 radiocarbon dates on mud wasp nests that constrain the ages of 16 motifs from this earliest known phase of rock painting in the Australian Kimberley region. These initial results suggest that paintings in this style proliferated between 17,000 and 13,000 years ago. Notably, one painting of a kangaroo is securely dated to between 17,500 and 17,100 years on the basis of the ages of three overlying and three underlying wasp nests. This is the oldest radiometrically dated in situ rock painting so far reported in Australia.
自然主义的动物描绘是世界上最古老的有日期的岩画的常见主题，包括印度尼西亚的野生牛科动物和法国的肖维洞穴中的狮子。已知最古老的澳大利亚原住民具象岩画也通常描绘自然主义的动物，但直到现在，还缺乏定量的年代测定。在这里，我们提供了 27 个关于泥黄蜂巢的放射性碳日期，这些日期限制了澳大利亚金伯利地区最早已知的岩画阶段的 16 个图案的年龄。这些初步结果表明，这种风格的绘画在 17000 到 13000 年前大量出现。值得注意的是，一只袋鼠的绘画作品根据三个覆盖和三个底层黄蜂巢的年龄，被可靠地确定为在 17500 到 17100 年前。这是迄今为止在澳大利亚报告的最古老的放射性测年原地岩画。
