Imagine exploring a cave in the outback in Australia and coming upon this depiction of the Dreamtime. I thought that this was so unique and cool we used it as inspiration for one of our original t-shirt designs.
Aborigines are the indigenous inhabitants who live in mainland Australia, Tasmania and other adjacent islands. Thought to be the oldest continuously maintained cultural history on Earth (50,000 years or more), this example of Paleolithic cave art depicts the Dreamtime. The Dreamtime explains the origins and culture of the land and of its people. It presents in a number of inter-related narratives (or myths) explaining Aboriginal Australian origins and culture, and therefore has a complex relationship to the prehistory of Australia. The art produced 32,000 to 11,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age is known as Paleolithic Art. The Dreamtime is the central, unifying theme in Australian Aboriginal mythology. The condition that is Dreamtime is met when the tribal members live according to tribal rules and traditions and are initiated through rituals and the hearing of tribal myths.
The Dreamtime, also called the Dreaming, consists of four aspects: The beginning of all things; the life and influence of the ancestors; the way of life and death; and sources of power in life. Dreamtime consists of all four of these aspects at the same time because it is a condition beyond time and space where all things exist at once. There is an image in the lower central portion of the cave art. The image is found in many cave paintings in Australia. What do you think it is? Remember, the artwork is somewhere between ten and thirty thousand years old.
