Age of Aboriginal Art Disputed

on May 7, 1997

This article talks about the proclaimed 'ancient' aboriginal art and how the date has recently been revised down.

Readers will remember the Hot Topic on “Ancient Aboriginals” a few months back. We advised caution, and to wait for the real scientific paper to be published. Our caution was vindicated—the Cincinnati Times of February 18 reported that an expert from the Australian National University disputes the 176,000 year date.

A luminescence dating expert at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Dr Nigel Spooner believes that the dates could be out by a factor of 10! He claims that the maximum age for the artefacts is 20,000 years, and “may be quite a bit less than that”.

Biblical creationists would go further, of course, since Aboriginals must be more recent than the tower of Babel.

This should be a good lesson for Christians. It was sad to read, just before this new information came to light, that an Australian minister wrote in his church bulletin that it was “a nonsense” to believe in a literal six day creation (which he admitted was the plain meaning of Genesis—see Six days? Honestly!. As “evidence” he used the “ancient” aboriginal dates!

When will Christians learn to base their thinking on the infallible Word of One who was there and knows everything, not on the opinions of fallible and biased men who weren’t there and don’t know everything (Cf. Job 38:4)?!