TEXT D It’s rare for a European
to be honored in the way that rock art expert George Chaloupka was recently by
an aboriginal (土著). "He fell in love with our country, our culture and
especially our rock art," said Mick Alderson, the Aboriginal chairman of Kakadu
National Park’s board of management. "Perhaps, more importantly, he also fell in
love with our people. This was based on respect for our people and their
knowledge. In turn, George has our respect--more than any other European I
know." Alderson’s praise was read out at a party to mark
65-year-old Chaloupka’s retirement from the Northern Territory Museum and Art
Gallery. Chaloupka was the dedicated amateur who discovered thousands of
previously unidentified rock art sites across Arnhem Land. From them, he
formulated the definite time sequence of those paintings, lending evidence to a
much earlier aboriginal occupation of Australia than previously imagined. He
fought the over-exploitation of the mineral-rich region, resulting in the
establishment of Kakadu National Park. His work recognized the art on the rock
walls as the world’s oldest existing record of human expression, created
thousands of years before the first designs were painted on the torch-lit cave
walls of Europe. George’s discoveries prove that ______.
A．he is the first man to make such discoveries B．they are the oldest artistic record ever found C．they are much older than those found in Europe D．the aboriginals occupied Australia for the first time