CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA—ABC News Australia reports that a survey of carvings on boab trees in northern Australia’s remote Tanami Desert has been conducted by a team of researchers led by traditional land owners and Sue O’Connor of Australian National University. The size of the boab trunks indicates that they are hundreds of years old. Many of the dendroglyphs are snakes, some of which are coiled, while others are wrapped around the trees. These snakes relate to the local King Brown Snake or Lingka Dreaming, explained traditional owner Brenda Garstone, and the story of the creation of the landscape. Other images include emu tracks and various shapes. The researchers recorded the carvings with thousands of photographs, and will create 3-D models of them using photogrammetry. O’Connor pointed out that stone artifacts used for seed grinding were found at the bases of the carved trees. The huge trunks would have offered shaded places to camp, she concluded. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Antiquity. To read about rock art in Arnhem Land that depicts ancestral Aboriginal creation stories, go to "Letter from Australia: Where the World Was Born."
