According to Walsh , Bradshaw art was associated with a period he called the '' Erudite Epoch '' , a time before Aboriginal people populated Australia . He suggested that the art may be the product of an ethnic group who had likely arrived in Australia from Indonesia , only to be displaced by the ancestors of present-day Aboriginal people . Walsh based this interpretation on the sophistication of Bradshaw art when compared to other art in the Kimberley region , such as the much later Wandjina styles . Media coverage has at times emphasised his claims of mysterious races . Pettigrew suggests that the Bradshaw paintings depict people with ‘ peppercorn curls ’ and small stature that characterise San groups ; he speculates that African people travelled , shortly after the Toba eruption some 70,000 years ago , by reed boat across the Indian Ocean , provisioning themselves with the fruit of the baobab tree . The Australian archaeological community has generally not accepted such claims and believes that Bradshaw are indigenous works . For example , Dr Andrée Rosenfeld argued that the aesthetics of the art did not support claims for a non-Aboriginal origin when comparison is made to the aesthetic value of contemporary Aboriginal art . The Australian Archaeological Association in a press release stated , " No archaeological evidence exists which suggests that the early colonisation of Australia was by anyone other than the ancestors of contemporary Aboriginal people " , the release quoted Claire Smith : " such interpretations are based on and encourage racist stereotypes "
Toba eruption
Toba catastrophe theory
Bradshaw rock paintings