Lost World Of The Kimberley : Extraordinary Glimpses Of Australia's Ice Age Ancestors

Description

Explores one of the world's least known mysteries: who were the first-ever human beings to find their way to Australia, where did they come from and how and when did they arrive? Australia's Kimberley was the cultural hub of the Ice Age world. Today, it holds within its bounds the world's largest collection of Ice Age figurative art, giving us vital clues to the origins of other cultures and civilisations right across the world. Back at a time when most of Europe lay deep beneath ice sheets, a people in the remote and rugged Kimberley Ranges of north-west Australia created figurative paintings of such verve and talent that they surpass all other of the world's rock art. Known as 'Bradshaws', after pioneer farmer Joseph Bradshaw who chanced upon the first examples in 1891, the Kimberley paintings feature lithe, graceful human figures depicted in a fashion altogether different from that of even the oldest traditional art, providing extraordinary visual insights into the everyday lives of Ice Age people. So who were these Bradshaw people? When did they live? What happened to them? Ian Wilson describes the early research on the Bradshaw paintings, and explains how advanced dating techniques have shed new light on the findings. He explores the theories put forward on for the origins of these seafaring people; one possibility is that they arrived from the Andaman Islands, where pygmy-like tribes still survive. Farther afield still the author draws connections with Saharan peoples, and he even unearths startling similarities with South American tribes. Lost World of the Kimberley is a wide-ranging and provocative look at the very Australian, yet also potentially international, mystery of the Bradshaw paintings of the Kimberley one of Australia's least known, yet most extraordinary, national treasures. Table of Contents: Author's preface Chapter 1 Drop-in at Reindeer Rock' Chapter 2 Rock art discoverers Chapter 3 Today's great rock art hunter' Chapter 4 Twenty-nine in a boat Chapter 5 Hands of time Chapter 6 Mother' and her dogs' Chapter 7 Breadbaskets and puppets Chapter 8 Boat design pioneers Chapter 9 Time of the spears Chapter 10 Odes to the boomerang Chapter 11 A Bradshaw lost city?' Chapter 12 Follow that river Chapter 13 Putting people to the paintings Chapter 14 Putting dates to the paintings Chapter 15 Putting genes to the paintings Chapter 16 Tracing where they went Chapter 17 Window on the world's oldest culture Notes Bibliography Chronology First published January 2006. About the Author: Ian Wilson has been a professional author since 1979, and has published more than twenty books, including The Turin Shroud, Jesus: The Evidence, and The Blood and the Shroud. He emigrated to Australia in 1995 and lives in Brisbane.