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Aborigines produced some of the earliest art in the world and art continues to play a major role in aboriginal culture, particularly as it relates to spirituality. Aboriginal art has also recorded in vivid detail many aspects of Aboriginal life in the distant past. Works of art were important parts of totemic and burial rituals. Rock Art is the artistic tradition for which Aborigines are perhaps best known. In different regions and at different times in the past, they painted and engraved rocks in a variety of styles with diverse motifs and subject matter. The earliest Aboriginal petroglyphs may date from more than 40 000 years ago.
Aboriginal petroglyphs usually depicted stylised shades and symbols as well as human faces and bodies. The meanings of most of these petroglyph designs remain unknown. Aboriginal rock painters used many types of pigments in their environment, e.g. mineral oxides, beeswax and other earth colours. Many works of Aboriginal art painted stories of the Dreaming, hunting scenes and animals may also figure prominently in Aboriginal rock paintings.
Northern Aboriginal groups developed a later but long-standing artistic tradition of making colourful stencils of parts of their bodies by spraying pigment from their mouth in the manner of modern spraypainting.
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