Long before the land grew roads and towns, long before the first Westerners arrived, long before humans here even had a word for art, the rock artists of Australia were drawing the Dreamtime. The Dreamtime for the aboriginal people is their story of creation, that time, so very long ago, when rocks and animals, and plants and people first sprang from the earth. And their beliefs about the Dreamtime are reflected in ancient paintings on rock, untold numbers of them buried in the stone country of Kakadu National Park. Thompson Yulidjirri still paints in the time-honored way.

　　"When I used to go stay with my grandfather, I used to tell him, “Please, tell me the stories of my ancestors.”

　　The aboriginal people of Australia are believed to have inhabited this land for at least 40,000, maybe 100,000 years, that would make them the oldest continuous human culture on the planet, and their ancient art is like a primitive history book and guide for living.

　　Pictures tell us a story here of how birds warn kangaroos of approaching hunters, and here the tale of war. Aboriginal people of all believed the pictures imparted powers. Paint a harvest, a fat fish, and chances are one would come your way. Seasons played a big role in their lives, so many of the images were painted each year at a specific time. The artists used red ocher(赭石) and yellow ocher made of soil and white clay. Certain clans(群体) were responsible for painting specific animals. If your group painted turtles, that’s what you painted, not kangaroos.

　　It was all seen as magic, all ceremonial, part of keeping the earth healthy. The last pure rock artist died in the 1960s. And modern aboriginal artists paint in bark, paper, wood, making their work portable and valuable. But the oldest works of rock art here are very slowly losing the battle with time. Centuries of monsoon rains, insects and tiny reptiles crawling over them, brushing away the grains of color.