Australian Rock

ART AND IMAGES IN PSYCHIATRY

SECTION EDITOR: JAMES C. HARRIS, MD Australian Rock Art: The Giant Wallaroo Site We found the first paintings in a large, open shelter under a twenty-metre-high block of sand- stone...amosaic of figures in rich earth colors of reds, yellows and white, portraying people, kangaroos, emus, fish, snakes, echidnas, and strange anthropomorphs....Quinkins...thefig- ures hinted at a great mystery about their creation and meaning. Percy Trezise, 19931(p ix)

ALEOGENETIC EVIDENCE2 DI- of Australia was the loss of meaning of The Emu Dreaming site is far less rectly links Australian ab- ancient practices that had been con- elaborate. The motifs are figurative, out- origines to the exodus of veyed to them in the Dreamtime. lines of human forms, suggestive en- early modern humans out of The Dreamtime (Tjukurpa) refers to graved bird tracks and a nest, pits dug into AfricaP 50 000 to 70 000 years ago. More- creation beliefs about ancestral beings the rock, and rings and radiating forms. over, the fossil record dates the prehis- who emerged from the stars or arose Closer observation suggests that these toric settlement of Australia to at least from the ground onto a flat, featureless markings and engravings may signify an 46 000 years BP (before the present), earth to create the landscape and to teach initiation site into a clan whose totem is making it home to the oldest early mod- the people1,3 social laws and customs, sa- the emu. The engraved tracks resemble ern humans outside Africa. When West- cred rituals, and religious beliefs. Then those of the emu, and the shape of an en- erners came to Australia, they found they disappeared into the earth. The larged hole suggests an emu nest. More- aboriginal peoples living as hunter- landscape is dotted with such powerful over, the profile of an emu is embedded gatherers and maintaining, as they had spiritual places, story places, where tales into the rock wall. Adjacent to it is a hu- for millennia, rock art shelters that had from the ancestral Dreamtime were man form with a hand resembling that of cultural and spiritual meaning for them.3 passed on orally for millennia to descen- a 3-toed emu foot. The human form seems The images are engraved, stenciled, or dents without a written language. Hu- to merge into the emu. For a clan mem- painted on the walls and ceilings of rock man kin groups (clans) identify with the ber, it may have seemed that he was bear- shelters and have ancestral meanings that animals, plants, and other phenomena ing witness at the very place where his an- living descendents could describe. as their totems that bind them together cestral being assumed its totem form. Both Percy Trezise, Australian bush pi- into their own “story.” Stories preserve emu totem men and emus are believed to lot, painter, and writer, was the first per- and affirm the life drama that defines the be descendants of the emu ancester whose son to systematically record rock art in aboriginal people. Wherever we go into spirit resides in the dreaming place. the Cape York area, especially in the area the Australian bush we are inside the The richness of aboriginal heritage is that has come to be known as Quinkin story of those who reside there. well represented at these sites near Laura. Country, a designation derived from the Rock shelter sites differ in the sto- Cultural heritage managers like the lo- name for ancestral spirit people3 (thumb- ries they tell. Some are secular sites, oth- cal Ang-Gnarra Aboriginal Corpora- nail). In the 1960s, Trezise mapped rock ers are initiation sites, and still others are tion and funding agencies are active in shelters from the air and then sought sorcery sites or mortuary sites. They de- the management and preservation of them out. His aboriginal friend Dick pict ancestors, heroes, totem ancestors rock art for future generations. Roughsey (Goobalathaldin), a member and animals, hunting and love magic, of the Lardil tribe, facilitated contact with and ancestral spirit people.5 Among those local tribal leaders for understanding the in the Laura region are the Giant Wal- James C. Harris, MD meaning of the engravings, stencils, and laroo camp (a secular site), Emu Dream- paintings. The galleries they found are ing, and Split Rock (dwelling place for 5,6 listed on the Australian Heritage Estate good and evil Quinkin spirits). REFERENCES and by UNESCO as being among the At the Giant Wallaroo site, a large wal- top-10 rock art sites in the world. laroo is shown in profile (cover). Two din- The early inhabitants of Cape York goes (residents of Australia for fewer than 1. Trezise P. Dream Road: A Journey of Discovery. St Leonards, Australia: Allen & Unwin; 1993. BP 4 BP2 have been traced to at least 34 000 . 5000 years ) are in pursuit, one painted 2. Hudjashov G, Kivisild T, Underhill PA, et al. Re- The beginnings of their art are not red ochre and the other white. A large red vealing the prehistoric settlement of Australia by known; the earliest dating is around human hand seems to reach up toward Y chromosome and mtDNA analysis. Proc Natl Acad 24 000 BP.4(p669) Accelerator mass spectro- the white dingo. An echidna is shown Sci U S A. 2007;104(21):8726-8730. metry (AMS) radiocarbon dating has behind the dingoes. Directly beneath the 3. Flood J. Rock Art of the Dreamtime. Sydney, Aus- been completed for nondegraded plant giant wallaroo stands a white demonic tralia: Angus & Robertson; 1997. fibers in paint and for carbon bearing Quinkin person with raised arms. Ra- 4. Cole N, Watchman AL. AMS dating of rock art in oxalate salts taken from accretions that diocarbon dating of figures here suggests the Laura region, Cape York peninsula, Australia. formed over the images over millen- that most of these drawings were com- Antiquity. 2005;79:661-678. 4 5. George T, Musgrave G; Ang-Gnarra Rangers. nia. Early engravings from Paleolithic pleted in the past 3000 to 4000 years. The Our Country, Our Art, Our Quinkins. Laura, Queens- times are authenticated, but many rock dingo pursuit of the kangaroo is still wit- land: Ang-Gnarra Aboriginal Corporation; 1995. art drawings are of more recent vintage nessed today (http://www.youtube.com 6. George T, Tresize M. Quinkin Rock Art: Images From from the past 3000 to 5000 years. The /watch?v=CXUCV5STh9g&NR=1 the Laura Area. Laura, Queensland: Ang-Gnarra Ab- saddest consequence of the settlement &feature=fvwp). original Corporation; 1996.

ARCH GEN PSYCHIATRY/ VOL 68 (NO. 10), OCT 2011 WWW.ARCHGENPSYCHIATRY.COM 989