The Cave Painting Art of Australasia and Papua New Guinea

The cave painting art of the Australian Aborigines was developed little after they peopled “the Great Australia”. In spite of not having yet the exact date to determine the antiquity of their first cave paintings, int the National Park of Kakadu in Australia, some of them could have an antiquity of 50,000 years (Chaloupka 1993:91). These paintings, that generally, represent negatives of hands, feet and animals paws, utilitarian and geometric shapes, and similar to the figures recently discovered in Papua New Guinea, and due to the proximity which existed for several thousands of years between both nations, it allows us to presume that this cave painting art in the island of New Guinea would have a similar age.

Painting resembling the Australian ones have been discovered also during the last decade in numerous caves and rocky shelters in the northern coast of the East Papua, and equally in East Timur and in the Kalimantan island (Borneo) in Indonesia. Up till today, only these last paintings have been dated and shed an antiqutiy of 12,500 years before our present days, but their researchers believe some of them can have even a greater antiquity.

In Papua New Guinea, the existence of ten caves and eaves with similar characteristic was well known since 1968 but still remained without been searched through or studied in detail and it was thouught that they probably constituted an isolated element and very rare. During the past months, the discovery of 147 other caves and rocky eaves with cave paintings situated in the Upper Kariwari river region by the anthropologist Nancy Sullivan and her team of collaborators indicates that at least in that area, there are plentiful of them and that the mentioned calcium carbonate (karst) mountains, surely have an enormous religious significance for these people. The total amount of caves and eaves containing cave painting art has not yet been determined since the investigation of them is still ongoing and, daily, new sites with similar features are discovered (personal communication, N. Sullivan). It is also probable that other mountainous massif located in other tributaries of the Kariwari, such as the Wogupmeri river, contain similar caves and eaves. Many ritual figures sculpted in stone of extraordinary beauty have been found but their origins and where they were found are unknown.

The motifs observed in these caves and eaves are very similar to the Australian pictographs; specially resemble those in the region of Carnavon Gorge (South Queensland) and, due to the profusion of them it can be considered as a whole region of cave painting art, of equal range as one of the five main regions of cave painting art of the Australia/Papua New Guinea zone, which are: Camavon Gorge, Laura (Cape York), Kakadu (North Territory), and Kimberly (West Australia). It is important to emphasize that all these places are considered as National Wealth and two of them as Humanities Weatlh by the UNESCO. (Gorecki, Paul and Rhys Jones. 1987 a.)

Thus, the job of systematic register of great number of them by the present Cruz Mayor Expedition constitutes an important scientific milestone, even more if they can be dated to reveal their antiquity.

The Cave Painting Art in Awim and its motifs

Whereas some panels contain few figures, other panels contain about 500 of them, sometimes superimposed, and they measure up to 60 meters of length by 20 of width. The figures are painted with red and yellow colored ocher, coal and white clay. These materials in general were applied by sprinkling over the wall of rock, with the target of obtained a negative of the object, in general hands, left hands as well as right hand, some with cut phalanges or with one or more fingers missing o hands where fingers appeared separated o the ring finger and the little finger were joined o forming the V of victory. There also exists some important impressions made like positive of hands, presumably with human blood.

Impronta de las manos grabada en las cuevas de Papua Nueva Guinea

Impression of the hands engraved in the caves of Papua New Guinea.

The other motifs represented although of minor scale are negatives of human feet, and occasionally of megapodes or of the casovario, and equally of other valuable objects like spoons of bone, hand-woven bags (bilum) leaves of diverse plants, disks of shell and of mother-of-pearl, rings, or of daggers made with bird shinbones. In other places there existed a big profusion of geometric shapes such as circular, rows of parallel lines or lines which radiate from a central spot as well as anthropomorphic figures made with big sticks.

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