Traditional owner Warren Barunga says he is angry that people are misusing his people’s sacred rock paintings.

The ancient Gwion Gwion and Wandjina figures, found in the Kimberley in Western Australia, have long been used in false claims that they were created by aliens or vanished civilisations.

Now the old tropes about the sacred rock art, born in the 19th century, have been supercharged by social media.

In the latest issue of Australian Archaeology, researchers have analysed the “extent to which popularised fringe narratives are displacing science-based and Indigenous knowledge-informed archaeology online” and the further dangers posed by AI summaries absorbing those narratives.

Countless social media accounts, some with tens of thousands of followers, falsely claim that the figures in Kimberley rock art were painted by a different or “superior” race, and possibly aliens.

The researchers, from various Australian universities, looked at examples in the Pacific as well as the Gwion Gwion paintings.

These examples “have all been subject to fringe ideas about a ‘superior race’ that dissociates descendant Indigenous peoples from their pasts”, they wrote.

The Gwion Gwion paintings, which feature tall, thin people with intricate details such as complex headdresses, were introduced to Europeans by the pastoralist Joseph Bradshaw in the 1890s. They are about 12,000 years old, and are often flanked by Wandjina, which are up to 5,000 years old. Both are used in the false claims.

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