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Early people had no written language. Their laws, cultural beliefs, and myths were preserved through stories, dances, songs, and paintings. Cave paintings perhaps the favorite way for early humans to maintain information for the coming generations. Time to time there was a significant improvement in the information which early humans shared through the cave paintings. Some times Prehistoric cave art is not simply depictions of wild animals. Instead, the animal symbols represent star constellations in the night sky. Here you can see another example of aesthetic drawings made by megalithic ancestors which explain not only the mammals but their inner organs as well.

Aboriginal Style Art

X-ray style art is a prehistoric rock art depicting animals by drawing or painting the skeletal frame and internal organs.

It can be found in Mesolithic art in Europe from 8000 BCE onward and apparently spread far and wide from an unknown center, as to reach Africa, South Asia, and Australia by 2000 BCE.

Images are known in which only the outline and the skeleton of the bird, fish, or mammal are indicated, and the entire internal system of organs is expressed by a “lifeline,” a single horizontal line that runs from the animal’s mouth to a dot representing the heart or stomach.

It is found today primarily in the Aboriginal rock, cave, and bark paintings of eastern Arnhem Land, in northern Australia. Figures painted in X-ray style vary in size up to 8 feet (2.5 m) in length and are delicate, polychromed renderings of the interior cavity of the animal.

Barrginj, (barr-jeen) Namarrrgon’s Wife

Barrginj, (barr-jeen) Namarrrgon’s wife, painted in white with black outline and decoration. Beneath these large group of men and women elaborately dressed and possibly on their way to a ceremony.

The Mimi spirits

The Mimi spirits are fairy-like beings of Arnhem Land in the folklore of the indigenous people of northern Australia. Westerners would equate them with elementals and nature spirits.

They are depicted as having thin and elongated bodies–so thin as to be in danger of breaking in case of high wind. To avoid this fate, the Mimis spend much of their time living in rock crevices.

As creation spirits, they are like humans but exist in a different dimension. It was the Mimis who first taught the people how to hunt, cook and paint.

These five figures are enough to explain the significant art of Afghanistan.

Click and reveal the untold secret of these four golden hats which excavated 170 years before.

Nabulwinjbulwinj, (nabul-win-bul-win) 6000 BCE

The figure of Nabulwinjbulwinj, (nabul-win-bul-win) a dangerous and wicked ghost spirit who ate women after striking them dead with a yam.

Tortoise

Kangaroo

Rock art at Anbangbang Rock Shelter

Religious and Cultural Significance

Whether the depiction of an animal in the X-ray style had articular religious symbolism is not known.

This looks a clear case of an early diffusion of a cultural feature, interestingly one that occurred several tens of thousands of years after the Out of Africa event.

Otherwise, how did people come up with the same idea of showing the interiors of animals and humans? Or, more likely, did the concept predate its appearance in Stone Age art?

Reference

http://www.travelnt.com

https://parksaustralia.gov.au/kakadu/do/rock-art/burrungkuy

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/xray/hd_xray.htm

https://www.balukootravel.com/itinerary-for-darwin-northern-territory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_style_art

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