This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Slithering across the ceiling of an Australian rock shelter is a giant snake with a crocodile-like head, razor-sharp teeth and a long tongue. It's more than 6 meters (20 feet) long, making it one of the largest Rainbow Serpent paintings ever recorded in Arnhem Land and adding to the curious repertoire of similarly giant paintings across the region.
According to a study published in Australian Archaeology, Aboriginal artists across the region began painting massive images of powerful ancestral beings during the 19th and 20th centuries. The goal was to exert control over their land, traditions and community in the face of rapid change as early European colonization upended the world they knew. The giant Rainbow Serpent was one of the images painted with this purpose.
"When I first saw the 6-meter (20-foot) Awunbarna Rainbow Serpent at site AW5, I thought to myself, "Wow! This is one of the largest Rainbow Serpent paintings I have seen in 40 years of Arnhem Land rock art fieldwork, and look at those teeth and tongue!'" said Paul Taçon, an archaeologist at Griffith University and lead author of the study. Since 2018, Taçon and his colleagues have been working with senior Amurdak Traditional Owner Charlie Mungulda to record 165 rock art sites across the Awunbarna region, also known as Mount Borradaile.
Their search has specifically focused on rock art made after European arrival. What piqued their interest was the puzzling trend of post-contact art being depicted at a massive scale, from 2-meter-long (7-foot-long) pythons to life-sized crocodiles and kangaroos. Among the giants were the most powerful creatures of all: Rainbow Serpents.
Rainbow Serpents are ancestral beings with the power to fold time itself so that the Dreamtime is not just in the past but also continues into the present. They are tied to the idea of change and learning how to cope with, accept and perhaps even control it. The team recorded 29 images of Rainbow Serpents across 21 sites, the largest concentration of these powerful beings anywhere.
On top of that, the team also found a depiction of a giant man more than 2 meters (7 feet) long and the only known depiction of a baleen whale in all of Australia. Giant depictions weren't limited to paint, either; a 124-meter-long (407-foot-long) stone arrangement also caught their eye. "We could see from the shape of the stone arrangement, with a large head-like stone at the end of a winding neck attached to a large body outlined with stones, that it resembled some paintings of Rainbow Serpents," Taçon said.
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