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Landsat 7 imagery of Lake Mungo. The white line defining the eastern shore of the lake is the sand dune, or lunette, where most archaeological material has been found. Lake Mungo is a dry lake located in New South Wales, Australia. It is about 760 km (472 miles) due west of Sydney [1] and 90 km (56 miles) north-east of Mildura.
The Lake Mungo remains are three prominent sets of human remains that are possibly Aboriginal Australian: Lake Mungo 1 (also called Mungo Woman, LM1, and ANU-618), Lake Mungo 3 (also called Mungo Man, Lake Mungo III, and LM3), and Lake Mungo 2 (LM2). Lake Mungo is in New South Wales, Australia, specifically the World Heritage listed Willandra ...
The central feature of Mungo National Park is Lake Mungo, the second largest of the ancient dry lakes.The Mungo National Park is noted for the archaeological remains discovered in the park [5] the remains of Mungo Man, the oldest human remains discovered in Australia, and Mungo Lady, the oldest known human to have been ritually cremated. [6]
In 1968, Australian geologist Jim Bowler went to the dry lake-bed of Lake Mungo and discovered the remains of Mungo Lady. [26] After studies were done on the remains of Mungo Lady , scientists have come to the conclusion that Mungo Lady is around 40,000-42,000 years old and is one of the most anatomically modern human fossils in the world.
Sites over 22,000 years old have been found in the Blue Mountains area west of Sydney, while sites going back 40,000 years exist at Lake Mungo. [3] There are some thousands of known sites, many but not all located in national parks.
The Mungo Lake remains indicate occupation of parts of the New South Wales area by Indigenous Australians for at least 40,000 years. The British navigator James Cook became the first European to map the coast in 1770 and a First Fleet of British convicts followed to establish a penal colony at Sydney in 1788.
40 kya – 20 kya: Oldest known ritual cremation, the Mungo Lady, in Lake Mungo, Australia. [48] [49] 37 kya: A population of Basal Eurasians migrate to Europe. Unlike the Early European modern humans that inhabited Europe earlier, these populations form part of the ancestry of modern Europe. [35]
The oldest human skeletal remains are the 40ky old Lake Mungo remains in New South Wales, but human ornaments discovered at Devil's Lair in Western Australia have been dated to 48 kya and artifacts at Madjedbebe in Northern Territory are dated to at least 50 kya, and to 62.1 ± 2.9 ka in one 2017 study. [26] [27] [28] [29]