Before ink, before writing, at the very beginning of human graphic communication - in the caves of prehistoric Africa, Australia & Europe - there was OCHRE, a miraculous ferric oxide clay, the ancestor of all later writing materials. 1/
This sample comes from the Wilgie Mia ochre mine, in the Weld Range of Western Australia, which has been in continuous operation for at least 40,000 years, from the earliest Aboriginal times up to the present day, where it continues to export ochre as a commercial pigment. 2/
In the Wajarri Aboriginal people’s tradition, Wilgie Mia was created by an ancestral being, Marlu, the red kangaroo. The different coloured ochres relate to the different parts of Marlu’s body: red ochre is his blood, the yellow ochre is his liver and green ochre is his gall. 3/
No other colour is linked as closely with early human history and survival as red ochre. And this human history includes not just Homo Sapiens - there's evidence that our Neanderthal cousins also used the pigment as far back as 250,000 years ago in their burial rituals. 4/
When humans first set foot on Australia’s northern shores about 50 000 years ago, they would have encountered Genyornis Newtoni, a bird three times the height of an emu. This red ochre painting of the extinct bird was discovered in a rock shelter in Arnhem Land 14 years ago. 5/
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