Aboriginal Rock Art Is Oldest in Australia, Scientist Says.

ARCHAEOLOGISTS; ROCK art (Archaeology); CAVES; RADIOCARBON dating; PAINTING

An archaeologist said Monday that he had found the oldest piece of rock art in Australia and one of the oldest in the world: an Aboriginal work created 28,000 years ago in an Outback cave. The dating of one of the thousands of images in the Northern Territory rock shelter known as Nawarla Gabarnmang will be published in the next edition of The Journal of Archaeological Science. A University of Southern Queensland archaeologist, Bryce Barker, said he found the rock in June last year but only recently had it dated at the University of Waikato radiocarbon laboratory in New Zealand. He said the rock art was made with charcoal. The oldest known rock art is in Spain, where hand stencils and red disks made by blowing paint onto the wall in El Castillo cave are at least 40,800 years old, according to scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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