Listed fourth on Bloomberg’s ‘new’ Seven World Wonders, are the ‘Top End’ rock art paintings found in Australia.
These rock paintings are estimated to be roughly 60,000 years old, found from central Australia all the way to the so-called Top End within the Northern Territory in Australia. These paintings are proof that Aboriginal communities occupied these spaces many years ago.
The rock art is symbols and drawings that were used as a mode of communication that would then get passed on to newer generations in the Aboriginal culture.
Kakadu National Park is home to some of the world’s greatest rock art with approximately 5,000 sites that contain these terrific paintings.
Out of the 5,000 sites found in Kakadu, Nourlangie and Ubirr are the two most visited sites with have large and easily accessible rock art.
Nourlangie houses a beautiful rock painting of the Lightning Man Creation Ancestor Namarrgon, his wife, and his kids. Another painting is of the extinct Tasmanian tiger on the Ubirr site. The tiger became extinct on the mainland in the early 1930s.
Stay tuned for the next part in our series on Bloomberg’s new Seven World Wonders no 5: Kelp Forests, South Africa
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Sources: Britannica, Australian Traveller
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