Mungo Man: 42,000-year-old Aboriginal remains to be reburied

[Sherman A1]

The remains of 108 Aboriginal people who died about 42,000 years ago will be reburied in outback Australia, years after they were first dug up without permission.

These include the remains of Mungo Man, which was famously discovered in 1974 and helped rewrite Australia's history.

The decision comes after the federal government finalised a four-year-long formal assessment about the reburial.

But some indigenous groups claim they were not consulted in this process.

Between 1960 and 1980, there were a flurry of archaeological finds. During this time, researchers found the remains of 108 Aboriginal individuals in Lake Mungo and Willandra Lakes, part of the Willandra world heritage area about 750km (470 miles) west of Sydney, including the remains of an aboriginal man that was dubbed Mungo Man.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-61006118

[yesphan]

1. Wow !

"This record was later broken when another 65,000-year-old site was discovered in other parts of the country in 2017."

Where did they come from how did they get there so long ago?

[wnylib]

2. Boats

The section under "Origins" explains it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_Australians

[yesphan]

3. I'd like to

see some examples of the boat making technology from 65,000+ years ago. I'll see what I can dig up.

[wnylib]

4. Rafts, maybe? Large canoes?

In much more recent times, the Polynesians used double canoes out on open ocean.

The original inhabitants of Australia did not have to cross open sea. During glaciation periods, water levels everywhere were lower. As the Wikipedia links says, Southeast Asia and current islands there were connected as one land mass except for a narrow straight between that land and Australia. So crossing a straight would not have been as foreboding as open ocean travel.

[wnylib]

5. This link explains the land connections

and how people from Southeast Asia populated Australia and lands that are now separate islands but were once connected. There is no other way that they could have reached Australia (Sahul) except by boat, so, regardless of our modern skepticism about sailing technology that long ago, it apparently did happen. When we think of boat travel like Eurpeans used for reaching the Americas, we envision large ships with sails. But sturdy raft of secured logs with a shanty on top for shelter from the sun would have been possible for Homo sapiens to build 65,000 years ago to cross a straight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahul

[yesphan]

6. I'm thinking more like,

did they use tools to debark logs and what sort of fibers did they use to lash the logs together.

[wnylib]

7. I don't know, but I am guessing that their

raft building skills were passed on through generations of raft and canoe builders, so there are clues from the few modern Polynesian sailors who still use traditional techniques. When Thor Heyerdahl made his experimental trip on a raft from Peru to the Polynesian Islands, he researched Polynesian raft building techniques and copied them, using the same materials, tools, and construction methods.

I watched the film, Kon Tiki, which showed how Heyerdahl did it. Looking up the materials, tools, and methods that he used would probably give some insights into those first rafts to Australia. Improvements would have occurred in the millennia since then, but the basic ideas would still be there - a boyant wood, scrapers if needed, a sturdy plant fiber to braid into a strong rope, some kind of oil or sap material to seal the wood against getting waterlogged.