Prehistoric art in Australia that is invisible to the naked eye is
being discovered by digital cameras and image-enhancing
computers. Archeologists take pictures of blank walls and
enhance them, and ancient images magically appear.
Archeologist Bruno David says, "Sometimes you can see a
trace of something, but even when a painting has faded
completely from view, the colors have gone into the rock.
With image enhancement, we can separate out those colors
from the gray of the rock and transpose them with ones that
our own eyes and brains are more sensitive to. Suddenly we
can see what was invisible before."
Bob Beale writes that David and his team go to places where
they know ancient art exists, and take hundreds of digital
photos of nearby rocks, which look completely bare. When
they enhance them, they often find elaborate images that
have faded from view. "We had no idea that we would be
able to pick up totally invisible images," David says. "It was
so exciting to see these characters and events from local
history and legend emerge so unexpectedly like this."
One of these is a red ochre painting of a menacing face with
fanged teeth, holding a shield. It surprised the scientists
because local oral tradition makes no mention of such a
character or to the use of shields. This means that the art
may be so old that the legends about it have faded away as
well. Other times, they've found images of animals that
scientists didn't know had ever existed in Australia.
"I would say that hundreds of thousands of individual rock
paintings are waiting to be found through this technology," he
says. "It will not only add many new images to existing
records, but on many rock walls the most faded ones will be
the oldest, so it will help to put all Australian rock art in a
much better historical framework as well."
Is there any way to find out what our ancient ancestors
knew? William Henry says we can do it by tracking
language. He talks with Whitley (and gives him a Tarot
reading for subscribers!) on
Dreamland.
For more information, click here.
