Anthropologists have concluded that the geometric line patterns on the walls of the Koonalda cave hide stories about birth, death and the whole spectrum of life that fits between them.
“Don’t look now, but this is the cave of death”. Some people have carved such an obscure message on the art of tens of thousands of years ago in the Koonalda cave in South Australia.
The perpetrators had dug under the steel gate of the fence surrounding the area and destroyed some of the carvings of the Mirning natives. They are the oldest evidence of the aboriginal settlement of South Australia.
Damage to a soft limestone wall cannot be repaired. Removing the graffiti would also destroy the last traces of the art underneath. Even the vandals needed only their fingers as tools.
One of the oldest of the Mirgnings Uncle Bunna Lawrie evaluates the culture magazine For Hyperallergic (you switch to another service), that working hard in a cave located 70 meters deep was not a whim. Koonalda is far from large population centers, and it is not easy to move in a dark dungeon, he reasons.
According to the latest archaeological dating, the carvings date back 30,000 years. The Ancestral Cave is still sacred to the Mirnings, but under Australian law the key to the gate is held by state environmental authorities. Mirnings can only borrow it on request.
The control of the cave is also the responsibility of the state authorities. Indigenous representatives have long complained about poor oversight. Even though the destruction is now more extensive than ever, Koonalda has been visited by scrawlers of its initials before.
Mining is the biggest threat
Koonalda was adopted eight years ago To the Australian National Heritage List (you will be redirected to another service)as science has gradually changed perceptions about the settlement of Australia.
Aboriginal people have a strong oral tradition of stories about their ancient history, but for a long time the Western view was that the first people landed in Australia just under 9,000 years ago.
Genetic tests (you switch to another service) have now stretched the beginning of the original settlement back 50,000 years or even further. There has been European settlement in Australia for almost 250 years.
Vandalism is not the only or even the worst threat to the earliest signs of Aboriginal settlement. The greatest danger is caused by mining.
In Western Australia, emissions from Woodside Energy’s expanding natural gas drilling are threatening to erode rock carvings dating back more than 40,000 years. Two years ago, the mining company Rio Tinto, on the other hand, blew up Juukani’s residential cave of the same age while searching for iron ore.