Peter: A jump to the Dreamtime

Summary

Photographing the painting and
ancient wasp nests on site

According to “Australia: Oldest rock art is 17,300-year-old kangaroo” (2021), the leader of an indigenous Australian organization has emphasized its importance for ensuring that traditional “stories are not lost” of the recent discovery that an Australian Aboriginal rock painting can be confidently dated to 17,300 years ago. Using radio-carbon dating on mud-wasp nests from both above and below the image of the famously Australian image, which was painted in red clay, the research team could be certain that it was created between 17,500 and 17,100 years ago. One researcher added that similarities to much older rock paintings in Indonesia, now dated back to 45,000 years, suggest possible connections between the two cultures in the region. 

Unlike my summary of the longer, more complex article about Bill Gates, this one took 26 minutes planning + 12 minutes to write + a few minutes to edit, so about 40 minutes altogether. Again, you can see my planning notes and my composing in the Google Doc. 

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Response

My country's coat of arms

The first thing that attracted me to this story in the BBC News as I was browsing just before our class last Tuesday was that it’s about Australia. And not just Australia, but our iconic marsupial the kangaroo. Even though I grew up in an area with plenty of kangaroos, also koalas, the fun of spotting one jumping around a paddock or along a road never failed to thrill. It is fitting that the kangaroo, along with the emu, grace my country’s national coat of arms. Kangaroos are also delicious. On my annual visit to see family and friends, I also get in a kangaroo steak. I wonder how many other nations gobble down their national animals. (Yes, we also eat emu meat in Australia, but I prefer duck from my brother’s farm to emu.) 

When I actually read the article, the science there impressed me. Radio-carbon dating is not new, but the way the scientists used the ancient mud-wasp nests, some of which the artists had painted over and some of which had been built by wasps over the new art work, was clever. It’s a bit like forensic science in detective shows on TV, where the smallest detail can unlock the mystery. 

And the actual age of the ancient paintings is a mystery worth unlocking. We’ve known for a long time that humans had occupied the land now know as Australia for about 50,000 years before the British turned up to claim it in the name of their king at the time, and then proceeded to suppress and kill off the original inhabitants as such “saviours” tend to do while making up amazing stories about how they were bringing civilization and the joys of religion and so on to the native people being turned into despised outcasts on what had for thousands of years been their homeland. At least my Italian ancestors arrived much later and we came as refugees escaping economic hardship and political repression in late 19th century Italy. 

Australia's oldest kangaroo,
or so the story now says

Of course, Australia’s Aboriginal people also told themselves stories. The kangaroo is most likely a character in one of those ancient Dreamtime stories of tribes who once covered Australia with their thousands of different languages, traditions and cultures. It was, in fact, the last sentence of the article that persuaded me that I wanted to summarize and respond to it. That sentence quotes an Aboriginal community leader: “‘It's important that Indigenous knowledge and stories are not lost and continue to be shared for generations to come,’ she said.” In my summary, I thought them important enough that I quoted four words from this quotation in my source. 

17th century telling of the story
where God punishes Adam and
Eve for seeking knowledge

I agree that stories are extremely important to human beings. And like examples that can clarify our ideas in an essay, it doesn’t always matter whether the stories we tell are fact or fiction, just that they can be believed on some level by the human groups that they bind together, which is what our stories do when we share them in recited poems, in books, in movies, in opera, in ballet, in TV series, or on rock paintings. The ancient religious stories of every culture are not true, but they are still powerful stories, even when people who believe in the religion interpret the ancient stories as metaphors rather than as facts. The story of  the creation of the world, of the Earth and of humans related in the Judeo-Christian Bible’s book of Genesis, for example, tells how God worked hard to create the world and everything in it in six days, and then rested on the seventh day. This ancient story is totally not true, but its power is seen in every country every week: even in Thailand, the week is seven days long, and Sunday is the day of rest. The ancient Middle-Eastern story still rules. And that same origin story in the Bible conveniently made women the servants of men, and gave humans the right to plunder the Earth, as we have done with results that might not prove catastrophic to ourselves. No god is going to save us. We perhaps need better modern stories founded on healthier moral values than the commands of dictatorial gods. But as with the ancient stories of the Aboriginal people, we need to remember, to tell and to critically review our stories from the past to understand what we are today, and what we might be able to be tomorrow.  

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Question

What are some positive and negative effects that have come from the traditional stories of your culture? 

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Reference

• Australia: Oldest rock art is 17,300-year-old kangaroo. (2021, February 23). BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-56164484