Yunnan Province, China has an outstanding body of rock art, with concentrations of rock shelter paintings and some engravings in a number of localities and a time span of many thousands of years. The greater Naxi area of Northwest Yunnan, in particular, has a fascinating rock art record as it contains some of China's oldest rock art as well as imagery unlike anything else from other parts of the c"untry. Curiously, some of the art resembles naturalistic Magdalenian rock and portable art of France and Spain. It also is similar to some of the earliest rock art of South India. ln this paper it is argued that northwest Yunnan rock art is an important early surviving form of hunter-gatherer symbolic expression with similarities to comparable naturalistic hunter-gatherer imagery found in parts of Southeast Asia, northern Australia and elsewhere. Comparative examples are drawn from recent research in India, Cambodia, Thailand and Australia and a multidisciplinary approach is used to place northwest Yunnan rock art in global contexts.