29 May 2025 The Future is the Product of the Past

Scientists Use Artificial İntelligence to Study Ancient Australian Rock Art

Rock art is the oldest surviving human art form. Throughout Australia, petroglyphs are part of the life and customs of aboriginal people. Petroglyphs (rock engravings) and pictographs (drawings) are an important part of rock art.

Rock art has changed and evolved over thousands of years. It is not that easy to follow this development.

For this reason, scientists use artificial intelligence to study ancient Australian rock art to learn how Aboriginal artists’ styles have evolved over thousands of years.

The painted patterns are not only weathered but are usually located in remote areas that can only be reached directly by helicopters, which makes long-term field research difficult. It is hoped that this technology similar to facial recognition software will eventually help archaeologists identify individual artists.

“We’ve been working in Arnhem Land where there are lots of different styles of human figures,” Flinders University archaeologist Daryl Wesley told AAP on Wednesday.

“So we thought let’s see if a machine can help group these by styles that we know exists and is well defined.” 

Dr. Wesley said that programmers trained the software with millions of images to be able to determine the differences between aging patterns. These works have a history of 5,000 to 15,000 years, and usually only have small changes, making it difficult for experts to classify and understand them. 

“It was remarkable. It not only separated them but ordered them in chronological order. It was a revelation,” he said.

Australian rock art
Australian rock art.

“We think there are a lot of applications. I’m interested in using it to tell the difference between species of macropods – kangaroos and wallabies.”

Dr. Wesley and his team worked with the Mimal and Marrku people of the Northern Territory’s Wilton River area.

“We do this work with traditional owners who bring traditional ecological knowledge, but sometimes animals are hard to figure out because all macropods look a bit like kangaroos,” he said.

“So we have a lot of trouble determining species.”

Dr Wesley said it was the first time artificial intelligence had been applied to rock art to help researchers categorize works.

“It’s a far more accurate and a less biased way to identify works because we bring our own preconceptions to them,” he said.

“We hope it will eventually help identify individual artists and new styles of painting as it gets more sophisticated.”

The software analyses hundreds of different points or components on each rock art photo and compares them for differences with other photos.

“We’re using a computer program to show how unique the rock art is in the Wilton River and how it relates to the rock art in other parts of Arnhem Land,” Dr. Wesley said.

The study was published in Australian Archaeology.

Australian Associated Press

Related Articles

In Poland’s “Death Valley,” new evidence of Nazi atrocities

18 August 2021

18 August 2021

In October 1939, between 30,000 and 35,000 Polish intellectuals, Polish civilians, Jews and Czechs, and German prisoners from psychiatric institutions...

Archaeologists 3D map Red Lily Lagoon, the hidden Northern Territory landscape where first Australians lived more than 60,000 years ago

10 May 2023

10 May 2023

Archaeologists map Red Lily Lagoon, a hidden landscape in the Northern Territory where the first Australians lived more than 60,000...

Traces of the Battle of Thymbra: Two Lydian Soldier Skeletons and A Helmet Found in the Ancient City of Sardis

13 August 2024

13 August 2024

During the archaeological excavations in the ancient city of Sardes, the capital of the Lydian Kingdom in western Türkiye, traces...

5,700-Year-old Ancient “Chewing Gum” Gives Information About People and Bacteria of the Past

4 April 2021

4 April 2021

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have successfully extracted the complete human genome from “chewing gum” thousands of years ago....

Archaeologists unearth 128 ancient urn burial tombs for children in north China

22 November 2021

22 November 2021

Archaeologists have uncovered urn burial chambers containing the remains of 128 infants among the ruins of an ancient city of...

Medieval double grave discovered with majestic objects inside the circular ditch

22 August 2022

22 August 2022

An early medieval double grave was discovered in Kirchheim am Neckar Friedrichstrasse, southern Germany, during excavations supervised by the State...

The Entire Genome Of 35,000-Year-Old Skull From Romania Sequenced “Peştera Muierii 1”

24 May 2021

24 May 2021

Researchers have successfully sequenced the whole genome from the skull of Peştera Muierii 1, women who lived in today’s Romania...

Stunning Roman-looking sandal found deep in the snow in the Norwegian mountains

16 April 2022

16 April 2022

Global warming is leading to the retreat of mountain glaciers. Incredibly well preserved and rare artifacts have emerged from melting...

Unusual construction material may be linked to the Tower of Babel

5 November 2021

5 November 2021

Archaeologists have recently discovered bitumen and mortar plastered onto a brick dating back to the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II. This...

1400-year-old artifacts discovered in the ancient city of Uzuncaburç (Diocaesarea)

26 January 2022

26 January 2022

During the excavations carried out in a tower in the ancient city of Uzuncaburç (Diocaesarea) in Mersin province in the...

Key Silla Kingdom Palace Site Found in South Korea After Decade-Long Probe

11 February 2025

11 February 2025

A decade-long investigation conducted by the Korea Heritage Service has uncovered a crucial palace site of the Silla Kingdom (57...

The oldest ceramic roof tiles ever found in land of Israel may be from Antiochus’ Lost Citadel in Jerusalem

6 December 2023

6 December 2023

The 16 ceramic roof tile fragments, from the Hellenistic period in the second century BCE, were discovered during an archaeological...

Archaeologists unearth 3,500-Year-Old Gold Jewelry in Egypt

14 December 2022

14 December 2022

Archaeologists discovered a collection of ornate jewelry at the Tell El-Amarna necropolis on the Nile River’s eastern bank in modern-day...

1300-year-old baby footprints found in excavations at the ancient city of Assos in western Turkey

3 September 2021

3 September 2021

1300 years ago, a baby stepped on baked bricks prepared to make a bread baking oven. The baby was probably...

Researchers Finds Nearly 500 Ancient Ceremonial Sites in Southern Mexico with Lidar Technique

26 October 2021

26 October 2021

A team of international researchers led by the University of Arizona reported last year that they had uncovered the largest...