Plans are underway to rebury the remains of more than 100 Aboriginal people, including the remains of Mungo Man and Mungo Lady, arguably the two most important people who ever lived in Australia .
The ancestral remains from Willandra occupy a crucial place in understanding the dispersal of modern humanity across the globe and the story of our species’ adaptation to climate change. Mungo Man and Mungo Lady have been dated to 42,000 years old, making them Australia’s oldest human remains. Mungo Lady is the oldest known cremation in the world.
Human remains were first identified at the dry Lake Mungo in 1968. During the 1980s, a small number of the ancestral remains were excavated. The vast majority, however, were exposed through erosion and collected by archaeologists from the Australian National University and NSW National Parks. Ancient DNA has been recovered from one individual, but the majority of the ancient people have not been researched.
The plan to bury Mungo Man and Mungo Lady pains some traditional owners – and the man who found them
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Oldest human burial in Africa unearthed
Discovery sheds light on the evolution of modern human behaviour.
An artist’s interpretation of Mtoto’s burial. Credit: Fernando Fueyo
About 78,000 years ago, at the mouth of a yawning cave complex in today’s south-eastern Kenya, someone placed the body of a three-year-old child on its side in a purpose-dug grave and covered it with earth from the cave floor.
Whatever else was said or done in those moments is lost in time, but this intentional act – described today in a paper in the journal
Nature – is the oldest human burial ever uncovered in Africa and offers scientists a window into ancient burial practice.
Modelling the ‘superhighways’ travelled by First Australians
New mapping of landscapes and populations sheds light on the peopling of Australia.
Map showing the Indigenous superhighways of ancient Australia. Credit: Megan Hotchkiss Davidson/Sandia National Laboratories, Zoe Taylor, CABAH
Indigenous Australians have long pointed out that their ancestors have lived on and cared for this continent since time immemorial. Hampered by entrenched misconceptions and outdated curricula, it’s only in recent decades – with discoveries like Mungo Man and Mungo Lady – that science has started to catch up.
A new study by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) has attempted to map the peopling of Australia by using a simulation model. The model ran more than 120 scenarios to predict population sizes and growth rates on the mega-continent of Sahul, which joined Australia and New Guinea before sea levels rose.
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Fifty Years Ago, at Lake Mungo, the True Scale of Aboriginal Australians’ Epic Story Was Revealed
Australia’s deep history was uncovered at Lake Mungo.
This month marks the golden jubilee of a watershed event in the history of this nation that should cause all Australians to pause and reflect.
On July 15, 1968, while searching for clues to past climates and ancient landscapes on land under the joint care of Paakantyi/Barkindji, Ngiyampaa and Mutthi Mutthi people, Earth scientist Jim Bowler ambled across the cremated remains of an Aboriginal woman eroding from a crescent-shaped dune flanking the shoreline of now-dry Lake Mungo in western New South Wales.
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