Bradshaw Pictures

The Bradshaw Pictures of the Kimberlies (North-western Australia) are a fresh and compelling addition to The Seven Wonders of Earth.

Chronologically they predate the pyramids of Egypt and the Palaeolithic cave paintings of Europe. The broad-shouldered, realistic representation of humans infers the origin of Egyptian Culture in the Kimberlies, while the slanted profilic features of the human face, reminiscent of Mayan pictures, suggest that the Kimberlies were the cradle of all pyramidal cultures.

The early paintings are postulated as extremely old; 60,000 years or probably much more, but their absolute age can not be determined. The iron oxide pigments have lithified, mineralogically assimilated into the rock.

No other kinds of relics are available to assist dating excepting fossilised mud wasp nests, built on one of the paintings. The age of wasp nest was determined at 17,500 years. The underlaying pictures are obviously older.

The esthetical composition, artistic skills of presentation and the highly choreographed themes indicate the existence of an advanced culture with sophisticated intellect and social organization well before the history of civilization as we know it.

The rock paintings were discovered by Joseph Bradshaw and his brother in 1891. The new settlers had set out to find grazing land for their cattle and became lost in the rugged Kimberly Mountains. Since the discovery no meaningful research was conducted into the pictures until the Bradshaw Foundation's efforts to publicise and research the unique cultural relics. With the Foundation's support Mr Graham Walsh commenced systematic investigation essentially on foot in the hardly accessible rugged Kimberlies.

In 1992 the Bradshaw Foundation toured the Kimberlies and photographed a large number of paintings in their protective vaults of shallow caves and overhanging ledges.

A Rock Art Research Team (RART) was formed at the James Cook University, Townsville, in the late 1990's with three political objectives to:-

RART published one summary description of the Bradshaws and one brief report on the fine outcome of a photo enhancing experiment by P.P. Biro. Both are incorporated in this review. The rest of their work is kept under lock, unavailable for the public.

Since the initial find by the Bradshaws', over 1,000 paintings have been discovered. By the Author's estimate an additional 10,000 to 50,000 Bradshaw Galleries are likely to exist in the Kimberlies. The Bradshaw Galleries cluster along and adjacent to the seven river systems, with greater concentrations around large alluvial flats.

The painted sites extend in an extremely rugged, rocky mountainous area of about 50,000 square kilometres.

The Bradshaw Paintings predate the art work of the present day Australian Aborigines of the Kimberley, whose history goes back to about 40,000 years by archaeological evidence.

The area accommodates several Aboriginal tribes, each with different language and different name for the Bradshaw paintings. The Aborigines of Kimberly have disowned the paintings. Their elders stated on records since late 19th Century, that the Bradshaw images were "before their time", and referred to them as "rubbish paintings". According to Aboriginal legends, the Bradshaws were painted by birds who pecked the rocks until their beaks bled, and then painted the images with their tail feathers.

In 1996 Grahame Walsh discovered a Bradshaw Painting partly covered with a fossilized Mud Wasp nest, which were removed and analysed using two techniques of dating.: -

Despite unreliable absolute age, the dating lends support by implication to Grahame Walsh's theories about the immense antiquity of the Bradshaw works of art.

The Bradshaws contain unprecedented insights into the social, intellectual and material culture of an Ice Age civilisation that thrived in the Kimberley region. In contrast with abundant paintings of animals, preserved in the caves of Europe, the Bradshaws are predominantly human figures, which are drawn in fine detail with anatomical proportions, uncommon to the rock art of Palaeolithic time.

On the rock faces, which cluster around northern Kimberley's seven river systems, the predominantly reddish figures are adorned with elaborate hair style and body ornamentation, presented in stunningly elegant, finely choreographed poses. The paintings depict social events, or groups seemingly floating in space.

Peter Paul Biro's image analysis suggests that the Bradshaw figures were sketched before being filled in, implying well conceived planning. Biro's image processing of certain weathered Bradshaw figures revealed details of well-painted faces with anatomically correct features. These may be the earliest "portraits" ever discovered.

Image processing by Biro has also revealed that some of the artwork was later retouched and restored, implying that the paintings were well understood and perused over generations, and suggests a long-lived continuous painting tradition, however, Biro has not released supporting material into the public arena with his statements.

The early Bradshaws are depicted with representation of abundant plant material. This suggests that the Bradshaws lived in a relatively lush environment in sharp contrast with the present hostile and desolate conditions of the region.

As the Bradshaws progressed in time they displayed a distinct trend of decline into barbarism.

The decline is noticeable in artistic skills, composition, motives and aesthetics. There is a noticeable increase in imperfect figures, and short stocky human forms appear together with Bradshaw figures. Both homoforms are clad in the Bradshaw tradition. The finely choreographed graceful postures gradually transit into wielding of weapons.

The cause of multilateral decline is seen in the emergence of an external pressure, infiltration and annexation by barbaric and warring new comers, probably the Aboriginals. Such a quiet conquest infers the Bradshaws were peaceful and trusting people, unaccustomed to deceit. The invaders eventually overtook the rule and overwrote the sophisticated culture.

From the decay of old the Aboriginal Culture was born. From the Bradshaws the Aboriginal elite, which had evolved within the Bradshaw society, acquired and propagated the simple boomerang (opposed to the double boomerang displayed on many pictures), woomera, basic graphics, paint making and painting. With the exception of introducing primitive rock carving, countless millennia passed without progressive modification of or addition to their learned skills.

The reason for 40,000 years of stagnation is seen in the combination of harsh and steady living conditions, lack of hostile competition, and complacency that sprang from a far too early stage of intellectual evolution.

The early stage of human evolution is also reflected by the deterioration and dissipation of Bradshaw culture, science and technology, which had fallen into the laps of Aboriginals. They proved to be bad custodians of the Bradshaw heritage.

With painstaking digital processing P.P. Biro has recovered the details of a small painted object found in the central attention of a finely choreographed group action. The details of Biro's find and comments are presented below.

Research into the history of civilisation systematically ignores one string of global events of paramount importance It is the oscillation of polar ice caps.

The investigation of river terraces and windborne terrestrial sediments (loess) has established the existence and climatic details of four long glacial periods of catastrophic magnitudes during the past 600,000 years. Interleaved with the Ice Ages were short warm periods, which commenced with the marine inundation of coastal and low-laying land masses. The last regression of the ice cap inundated large tracts of land, which lie now down to 90 to 120 metre depths below the current sea level. The passage of first and most severe Ice Age on record resulted in at least 300 metre rise in sea level.

Since the temperate to warm coastal strips were the preferred habitats, the civilisations were eradicated and displaced with regularity by the transgress of ice caps, immense glaciers and swallowed up by seas. The handful of survivors were bound to resettle in the new temperate zones and rebuilt their life without the benefit of resources and technology that they used to have. Hence the emergence of advanced Stone Age civilisations without a prior evolutionary chain.

Evidences of submerged civilisations do exist. Huge stone constructions were photographed under the Caribbean Sea, the wall of basalt slabs in the Caroline Island, which continues into 90 m depth under the sea, a sumerged Sphinx and other constructions discovered recently by French archaeologists offshore Egypt.

The Bradshaws original homeland may rest under the northwest shallow seas of Australia, or may have been obliterated by violent floods of the south, which preceded and accompanied the transgress of ice caps, with devastating energy to roll 1 metre lumps of rock.

The pictures and text of Bradshaw Albums 1 and 2 are the reproduction of the Albums presented by the Bradshaw Foundation. Album 3 is a mix of pictures presented by an earlier web publication of the Foundation and pictures from others sources. The purpose of reproducing the Albums is to present them in a form of fast navigation to assist uninterrupted enjoyment and comparative study of pictures.

Loading each album takes about 6 minutes with a 56 kb/sec modem, a time well invested.