Posted on 12/17/2008 7:31:37 PM PST by SunkenCiv
The world's oldest depiction of a human face could be threatened if Australian mining companies are permitted to build an explosives factory on the remote Burrup peninsula in the northwest of the country.
A bulbous image of indiscernible sex, with huge eyes and sunken cheeks, the 10,000 year-old carving is chipped out of hard rock. Thousands of other carvings, mostly of plants and animals, which date back to beyond the last Ice Age, are scattered about the peninsula.
Archeologists believe that aboriginal tribes made the distinctive carvings up to 30,000 years ago. They could be nearly twice as old as the Lascaux cave paintings in the Dordogne, France.
Last year the mining company Woodside Energy won permission to move 170 pieces of rock art to a new site to make way for a liquefied natural gas plant. Next year Burrup Nitrates is planning to build an explosives plant on the site.
Opposition to the development is led by Robin Chapple, a British-born Green MP...
The value of the carvings lies in their unbroken depiction of ancient tribes' adaptation to thousands of years of climate change...
The site is sacred to the local Yaburara aborigines, whose ancestors' carvings tell how the tribes changed their hunting and gathering methods to survive. Some carvings from 25,000 years ago show they hunted mammals and flat-tailed wallabies; in more recent times, as the ice melted, they turned their attention to turtles and the Tasmanian tiger.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
|
|||
Gods |
To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. |
||
· Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · · The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
A bulbous image of indiscernible sex, with huge eyes and sunken cheeks....
Where is that Helen Thomas pic....
No...please...have mercy on our retinas.
I tend to be hard core capitalist, but no way in hell should any company be allowed to destroy anything this old and significant. Apparently it all can’t be moved...
I ain't never had me an aboriginal...
Looks like an owl to me ;)
I always know where a thread like this will lead!
It’s an explosives company. Chances are the whole factory will eventually blow sky-high. That’ll l’arn ‘em.
I don’t think this is much of a problem. Some of these will be moved, the rest don’t need to be to make way for the plant.
looks like an owl to me too.
Looks like a fat guy smoking a “peace” pipe to me......
No ...not an owl. It looks like that old WW2 drawing (something like ‘kirby was here’or something like that, that used to be drawn everywhere, showing some bald guy with a big nose peeking over stuff).
Kilroy was here....
Helen, is that you?
Actually, that depiction was a forerunner of Helen Thomas.
She is part of the only known species that DEVOLVED.
“Kilroy Was Here” is the american version, text, no picture.
The little guy with the nose hanging over a fence was called “Chad”, and was british in origin.
Although they had separate origins, they were often found together throughout WW2 europe, asia, and the middle east, especially in areas where americans, aussies and brits were allied.
Thank you sir.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.