The drawings of Australia’s indigenous peoples drawing a pair of watercraft on the walls in a cramped cave hundreds of years ago have continued to baffle archaeologists since they were discovered nearly 50 years ago. Now, a new study may have solved that mystery…
The paintings probably depict ancient warships from the area now known as Indonesia. This suggests it may indicate a conflict between locals and visitors from afar.
Archaeologists have determined that the boats were warships from the Moluccas (also known as the Maluk Islands), an archipelago off the east coast of Indonesia and just north of Australia, according to a study published May 2 in the journal Historical Archeology.
Study co-author Daryl Wesley, an archaeologist and senior lecturer at Flinders University, said in a conversation with ABC News Australia, “Just these two tools suddenly add another dimension to the interaction space of northern Australia – Australia, in the middle of nowhere, on its own. “It’s not a land that’s been lost and disconnected from anywhere else for 65,000 years,” he said.
It was already known that the Moluccan Islands had contact with the Aboriginal people in Australia. However, unlike other Aboriginal rock art depicting ships from the Moluca Islands, including Macassan prahus (Sailing boats originating from Indonesia), these drawings show warrior features and display triangular flags, pennants, and bow decorations that depict the state of war, according to the study.
“These are warships decorated with all those pennants, flags and other elements that really set them apart from your normal trading or fishing boats,” Wesley says. “This is rock art and all the other Macassan found in Arnhem Land [North Australia] It’s really different from our understanding of ships.”
The Maluk Islands boats were rebuilt centuries later.Due to the abundance of detail in these paintings, the researchers think that the Aboriginal people who created the rock art had intimate knowledge of the craft, either by long or close observation or by actually traveling over them. The presence of these drawings alludes to examples of physical violence, or at least a projection of power, by the people of the Moluccas against Native Australians. But more research is needed to know the exact purpose of rock art, according to the study.
Lead author Mick de Ruyter, a maritime archaeologist and associate professor at Flinders University, explains, “These motifs suggest that occasional or accidental journeys from Indonesia to the Australian coastline were made before or simultaneously with regular trepang (sea cucumber) fishing visits. It supports existing ideas,” he said.
Co-author Wendy van Duivenvoorde, an associate professor of marine archeology at Flinders University, said in a statement that assuming the inhabitants of the Moluka Islands brought their ships to Australia, it would provide a better understanding of the contact between the two groups.
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