RESEARCHING, PRESERVING AND PROMOTING KIMBERLEY ROCK ART
| ||
| ||
Galleries | ||
 | ||
|
|
|
| ||
Our vision is to promote scientific research into the rock art of the Kimberley and, in conjunction with the indigenous people of the region, ensure it is preserved and recognised for its national and international significance.
MISSION STATEMENT:
The Foundation supports and encourages integrated scientific research into the rock art of the Kimberley region for the purpose of increasing our knowledge of the earliest Australian people, their art and cultures and their relationship with a changing environment.
Working with the assistance of local aboriginal people, we are committed to sharing and using this knowledge to ensure the ancient rock art is recognised and promoted for its national and international significance and protected and preserved accordingly.
The Foundation raises and allocates funds with the following aims:
- To foster scientific research into the rock art and its chronological, cultural, ecological and climatic contexts
- To encourage new young scientists into these fields of research
- To closely involve local indigenous people in field research and training
- To collaborate and share knowledge with indigenous groups, the public, academic institutions, museums and related research projects in Australia and internationally
- To encourage protection and preservation of Kimberley rock art
- To actively promote research outcomes to ensure the broadest possible appreciation of the national and international significance of Kimberley rock art.
OUR PRINCIPAL SUPPORTERS
We are grateful to the Ian Potter Foundation for its critical support of the sustainable research program that underpins the work of the Kimberley Foundation and to the generous support of Qantas, a founding sponsor of the Foundation, the KFA's Official Airline and Inaugural Donor.
OUT OF AFRICA, INTO AUSTRALIA?
Around 100,000 years ago humans began momentous migrations from eastern Africa in a quest for survival, which led them in many directions, including southern Asia. Archaeological evidence from the Kimberley Region of Western Australia confirms that by at least 40,000 years ago Homo sapiens had moved deep into northern Australia. It is possible that the first people arrived on the northern shores well before that time. The Kimberley Foundation is supporting the search to unravel the story of human occupancy in Australia from these beginnings.
Before the end of the last great Ice Age, sea levels were 100 - 150 metres lower than at present. The north Kimberley coast extended more than a hundred kilometres further than it does now, and the distance across the Timor Sea may have been less than 40 kilometres, a short sea passage for Homo sapiens. The earliest people were not primitive - they were fully functioning humans, with large brains, language, tool use, and weapons - and artistic imagination and skill. A vast array of thousands of rock paintings is dispersed through the northwest Kimberley. Some of this is the oldest rock art in the world - a legacy of Australia's first peoples.
The exquisitely detailed and dynamic paintings connect us to a lost world tens of thousands of years before the present [BP]. Recent unpublished dates for the art place suggest it could have been painted 35,000 years BP. Shifts in painting styles and sequences over time offer clues about early human culture, social organisation, use of flora and fauna, and migratory patterns in response to climate change at the end of the last Ice Age.
Page Functions
We invite your support
Funding of this long term project has begun but we need your help.
The Kimberley rock art and its ancient history will remain a mystery without your help. The Kimberley Foundation is seeking support on various levels. Find out how to make a donation.