“What” beats “when” in every tale.
That truth rings even more true in the world of cave art.
Amid the ongoing agony of bushfires, Australian archeologists celebrate their discovery of what is, to date, the oldest rock painting on Earth. In the 14-foot high cave painting, wild pigs and a buffalo stand surrounded by spear-bearing humans.
The image was found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi and dates back at least 44,000 years.
It’s old. It also ranks as the world’s first figurative artwork. Translation?
Our first Storytelling-by-Picture!
At the news, my mind flashed back five weeks ago to a sunrise beacon and I thought, Australia! We’re coming full circle!
At Uluru, DH and I came face-to-face with rock cave paintings. Our guide explained these illustrations as tales of aboriginal movement and migration.
The Anangu look for concentric circles which symbolize waterholes or other significant way stations. For a roundtrip journey, the key appears in multiple concentric circles linked via straight lines.
Uluru, ancestral home to the Anangu, includes hidden waterholes (some dry by drought these days). Tribe members travel between waterholes and other way stations then relate their experiences with each other.
Each experience lived becomes a story shared then passed from generation to generation.
What concentric circles tell the Stories of your Life?In discovering Indonesian rock paintings after seeing the same in Australia, I fascinate on the tales of each. The age and location of either mean nothing.
I ask instead—what does it mean? What are we supposed to do with these newly discovered paintings?
Some people see only line drawings and chuckle.
They glance once then mutter about Stone Age Neanderthals facing off against big, mean animals. In a single reaction, they revert to what comforts: light and breezy with a touch of standoff pose, ready for battle.
Others stand up and study the lines marking the rock.
They scrutinize the concentric circles. They find deliberate postures or speculate about hidden meanings: underlying glances, line direction, or distances between figures.
They’re all correct.
Sometimes, an image is what is says. Two figures squaring off in what is universal to every story: conflict rearing its inevitably ugly head.
Other times, an image stands in for meanings four layers deep.
Both matter.
And both are part of a story waiting, sometimes thousands of years, to be understood.
Some things never change.
Is that good news?