1Good morning, everyone.
2I've been invited to talk about my research project into Australian Aboriginal rock paintings.
3The Australian Aborigines have recorded both real and symbolic images of their time on rock walls for many thousands of years.
4Throughout the long history of this tradition,
5new images have appeared and new painting styles have developed.
6And these characteristics can be used to categorise the different artistic styles.
7Among these are what we call the Dynamic, Yam and Modern styles of painting.
8One of the most significant characteristics of the different styles is the way that humans are depicted in the paintings.
9The more recent paintings show people in static poses.
10But the first human images to dominate rock art paintings, over 8,000 years ago, were full of movement.
11These paintings showed people hunting and cooking food
12and so they were given the name 'Dynamic' to reflect this energy.
13It's quite amazing considering they were painted in such a simple stick-like form.
14In the Yam period, there was a movement away from the stick figures to a more naturalistic shape.
15However, they didn't go as far as the Modern style,
16which is known as 'X-ray' because it actually makes a feature of the internal skeleton
17as well as the organs of animals and humans.
18The Yam style of painting got its name from the fact that it featured much curvier figures
19that actually resemble the vegetable called a yam,
20which is similar to a sweet potato.
21The Modern paintings are interesting because they include paintings at the time of the first contact with European settlers.
22Aborigines managed to convey the idea of the settlers' clothing by simply painting the Europeans without any hands,
23indicating the habit of standing with their hands in their pockets!
24Size is another characteristic.
25The more recent images tend to be life size or even larger,
26but the Dynamic figures are painted in miniature.
27Aboriginal rock art also records the environmental changes that occurred over thousands of years.
28For example, we know from the Dynamic paintings that over 8,000 years ago,
29Aborigines would have rarely eaten fish
30and sea levels were much lower at this time.
31In fact, fish didn't start to appear in paintings until the Yam period
32along with shells and other marine images.
33The paintings of the Yam tradition also suggest that, during this time,
34the Aborigines moved away from animals as their main food source
35and began including vegetables in their diet, as these feature prominently.
36Freshwater creatures didn't appear in the paintings until the Modern period from 4,000 years ago.
37So, these paintings have already taught us a lot.
38But one image that has always intrigued us is known as the 'Rainbow Serpent'.
39The Rainbow Serpent, which is the focus of my most recent project,
40gets its name from its snake or serpent-like body
41and it first appeared in the Yam period 4 to 6,000 years ago.
42Many believe it is a curious mixture of kangaroo, snake and crocodile.
43But we decided to study the Rainbow Serpent paintings
44to see if we could locate the animal that the very first painters based their image on.
45The Yam period coincided with the end of the last ice age.
46This brought about tremendous change in the environment,
47with the sea levels rising and creeping steadily inland.
48This flooded many familiar land features
49and also caused a great deal of disruption to traditional patterns of life,
50hunting in particular.
51New shores were formed and totally different creatures would have washed up onto the shores.
52We studied 107 paintings of the Rainbow Serpent
53and found that the one creature that matches it most closely was the Ribboned Pipefish,
54which is a type of sea horse.
55This sea creature would have been a totally unfamiliar sight in the inland regions where the image is found
56and may have been the inspiration behind the early paintings.
57So, at the end of the ice age, there would have been enormous changes in animal and plant life.
58It's not surprising then, that the Aborigines linked this abundance to the new creatures they witnessed.
59Even today, Aborigines see the Rainbow Serpent as a symbol of creation,
60which is understandable given the increase in vegetation and the new life forms that featured when the image first appeared.