Scientists find 10,000-year-old stone carvings

A team of Australian scientists has stumbled upon ancient stone carvings in an East Timorese cave dating back at least 10,000 years.

The findings, just published in the journal Antiquity, follow the discovery in the Lene Hara cave in May 2009.

The team of archaeologists and palaeontologists had been looking for the fossilised remains of extinct giant rats.

But the CSIRO's Dr Ken Aplin accidentally saw the stylised face carvings in the limestone roof.

www.abc.net.au...

The Lene Hara carvings, or petroglyphs, are frontal, stylised faces each with eyes, a nose and a mouth. One has a circular headdress with rays that frame the face.

Although stylised engravings of faces occur throughout Melanesia, Australia and the Pacific, the Lene Hara petroglyphs are the only examples that have been dated to the Pleistocene.

www.abc.net.au...

The Lene Hara carvings, or petroglyphs, are frontal, stylised faces each with eyes, a nose and a mouth. One has a circular headdress with rays that frame the face.

reply to post by Stormdancer777


Already a thread storm..
www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by Stormdancer777


Something that never escapes me... Since I saw a map showing how Australia. PNG and Indonesia were connected with grasslands in-between about 12,000 years ago there would have been quite a gathering of mixed races / cultures in the area.. and again 5000 years ago the Arafure Sea was almost all land. The tribal people in the whole area would have been mixed.

I'm not sure if Australian aboriginals ever made carvings like that though. I wonder how they dated it as 10,000 years ago. They'd have to guess. Even rock paintings can't be dated accurately.

Originally posted by backinblack
reply to post by Stormdancer777

 

Already a thread storm..

www.abovetopsecret.com...

edit on 12-2-2011 by backinblack because: add link

OOPS

well here is another image

www.scienceimage.csiro.au...

reply to post by squandered

I wonder how they dated it as 10,000 years ago. They'd have to guess. Even rock paintings can't be dated accurately.

I didn't know that.

reply to post by squandered


Australian Aborigines were mainly into painting but I have seen a few animal carvings..
I haven't come across anything similar to the OP as yet..

Originally posted by backinblack
reply to post by squandered

 

Australian Aborigines were mainly into painting but I have seen a few animal carvings..
I haven't come across anything similar to the OP as yet..

Yea, this was a strange one, yes?

BTW now there are three threads on this topic,

reply to post by squandered


Any map that shows you Indonesia being connected to PNG was painfully inaccurate. At the last glacial maximum, there were two landmasses - Sunda, which is modern-day southeast Asia and Indonesia, and Sahul, modern Australia, Tasmania, and PNG. Separating the two was a pretty broad expanse of water, which formed a pretty strong barrier to faunal exchanges - the mammals that we know crossed this bit of sea prior to the modern era were only humans, human "cargo (dingos and some rats) and the crab-eating macaque (which only made it to a few of the "middle" islands such as Sulawesi)

Also, if these rock arts are ten thousand years old, that makes them fairly recent, at least compared to the Australian Aborigines; at least fifty thousand years more recent.

reply to post by TheWalkingFox


Thanks for the info, but it begs the question as to how aboriginals first came to Australia. When the Tasman sea cut off Tasmania the aboriginals never went back because they had no boats. It's safe to assume that first people didn't have boats at all. 5000 years ago they might have, but at some stage the sea must have been low enough to walk across - if not 12,000 years ago, maybe 50,000 years ago?

reply to post by squandered


for people to reach sahul, they had to have boats to cross the lombok straits betweem lombok and bali. This is also know as the wallace line, it is, as mentioned, the divider between australian and asian fauna. The straight has never been dry and is about ten miles across at the narrowist point. The only way to cross would be by boat.
That fact proves that early humans, ie homo erectus, was capable of building boats or rafts, because they crossed the straits to get to at least the island of flores.

There is also pre aboriginal rock art in northern aus., The Bradshaws, that show people in boats.

Originally posted by punkinworks10
reply to post by squandered

 

for people to reach sahul, they had to have boats to cross the lombok straits betweem lombok and bali. This is also know as the wallace line, it is, as mentioned, the divider between australian and asian fauna. The straight has never been dry and is about ten miles across at the narrowist point. The only way to cross would be by boat.
That fact proves that early humans, ie homo erectus, was capable of building boats or rafts, because they crossed the straits to get to at least the island of flores.

There is also pre aboriginal rock art in northern aus., The Bradshaws, that show people in boats.

I can't see how you are wrong...

What about the little hairy animal-people that supposedly existed on the east coast? They couldn't have built boats. I don't think they even had fire.

Duplicate thread closed.