Wasp nests provide the key to dating 12,000-year-old Aboriginal rock art
Fanciful human figures adorning rock shelters in western Australia’s Kimberley region have often been assumed to date back 17,000 years or more. In a stinging rebuke of that idea, a new study suggests that most of these figures were painted much more recently — around 12,700 to 11,500 years ago. Ages of rock art in Southeast Asia (SN: 11/7/18), Australia and elsewhere are notoriously difficult to establish (SN: 10/28/19). Geoscientist Damien Finch of the University of Melbourne in Australia and his colleagues radiocarbon dated small, hardened pieces of 24 mud wasp nests positioned partly beneath or partly on top of 21 Gwion-style rock paintings, thus providing maximum and minimum age estimates. The dated paintings came from 14 Aboriginal rock art sites. Gwion art depicts elaborately garbed human figures and objects such as boomerangs and spears. Most radiocarbon dates from the mud wasp nests indicate the Gwion figures were painted around 12,000 years ago, at least 5,000 years later than typically thought, the scientists report February 5 in Science Advances....