How Lake Mungo hid Australia's ancient secrets for tens of thousands of years

In the middle of New South Wales in Australia lies a dried-up lake known as Lake Mungo.

It currently lies in a particularly arid region that is similar to a desert. However, over 15,000 years ago, this lake was full of water and surrounded by lush vegetation.

But a lot has changed over this time. Now, Lake Mungo, along with 16 other ancient lakes, is part of the Willandra Lakes Region, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

For much of Australia's modern history, this area had been ignored by archaeologists, due to its sheer distance from major population centres and its inhospitable climate.

However, when researchers started exploring it in the middle of the 20th century, it proved to be a treasure trove for archaeologists.

In 1968, a geologist named Jim Bowler was exploring the prehistorical lakes and made a startling discovery.

Sticking out of the ground were tiny fragments of a human skeleton. The remains were so fragile that Bowler and other experts had to work carefully to extract the bones.

When they submitted their samples for testing, they were excited to learn that they had unearthed the remains of a young woman.

Since she had no name and other personal details, she was simply dubbed the ‘Mungo Lady'.

However, as they studied the fragments of skeleton, archaeologists made a startling find.

It appeared that, rather than simply being buried in the ground, there was clear evidence that her body had been partially cremated first.

If this was true, it would be one of the oldest pieces of evidence of this kind of a ritual in Australia's distant past.

News of the remarkable discovery quickly spread, and teams of researchers travelled to the area to conduct much more extensive explorations.

Over the new few years, the Willandra Lakes region yielded more than 130 separate ancient human remains.

But it would be another discovery by Bowler, which was made six years after the first, that would be an even bigger news story.

While conducting another excavation in 1974, he unearthed the remains of a man.

Consistent with the first find, this person's remains were christened ‘Mungo Man'.

It was this second find which would provide a slew of new information that would change history.

As more and more finds were brought to light from the Lakes region, people kept asking the same question: How old are these remains?

It was obvious to the archaeologists that the people they had discovered were of a sufficient age that their bones had been encased in rock over an incredibly long time.

It was therefore assumed that they may be as old as the Neolithic era, which lasted from 10,000 BC to 3000 BC.

Having human remains from this period would have been a very rare find.

In order to establish the approximate age of these two skeletons, the bones were sent to a lab for Carbon-14 tests to be performed.

The researchers were not prepared for the results. The early estimates suggested that Mungo Man and Mungo Lady died around 40,000 years ago: more than 30,000 years older than they had expected.

Subsequent analyses were conducted to confirms this conclusion and these tests propose they might even be older - as much as 42,000 to 45,000 years old.

The incredible age of the skeletons meant that people found at Lake Mungo dated back to the Pleistocene Epoch.

This was a period that lasted from about 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago. No one had imaged that early humans had lived in Australia during this time period.

As a result, the data from Mungo Man has provided crucial information about the migration patterns of ancient humans.

Some people suggest that the ancestors of modern Aboriginal Australians must have been among the very first to leave Africa.

As the awareness of these finds spread through the archaeological community, further excavations were carried out in the area. 

A series of find revealed a broader picture of the early humans who lived on the shores of the ancient lake.

In fact, Mungo Man and Mungo Lady were not the only inhabitants of this region.

Specifically, sediment analysis from Lake Mungo has revealed evidence of frequent climate changes over tens of thousands of years.

This including periods when the lake was full of water and teamed with marine life.

Evidence of fish and shellfish meant that small communities could have easily lived off hunting activities in this ecosystem.

As was to be expected, an array of artifacts discovered around the former lake's edge confirmed the idea that the inhabitants did just this.

Remains of shellfish, fossilised fish, and stone tools, indicated that humans regularly visited Mungo, lived off the wildlife and may have even set up temporary communities.

Some of these relics date back to the last ice age, which ended some 25,000 years ago.

The discovery of Mungo Lady and Mungo Man had been a revolution in Australian archaeology.

But the most interesting part of their story was yet to be told. We have already touched upon the realisation that the body of Mungo Lady had been partly burnt before her burial.

As a result, some might expect that Mungo Man underwent a similar process.

This was definitely not the case. Instead of finding fragments of charred bones, like Mungo Lady, Mungo Man was a complete skeleton.

There were no signs of cremation. It appeared that he had been intentionally placed into the ground by other early humans.

The hints that this was an intentional burial were based upon the careful positioning of his body.

Specifically, he was laid on his back, with his arms were stretched out straight and crossed over his body.

Even more curious is that there was clear discolouration in the ground immediately around his skeleton. 

The pale sandstone had absorbed a rich red colour. It looked like someone had sprinkled a coloured powder over the body of Mungo Man when he was interred in the ground.

The archaeologists tested the discoloured rock and quickly identified that it was caused by a brightly coloured rock called red ochre.

What made this even more fascinating is that red ochre cannot be found anywhere near Lake Mungo.

In fact, the closest access to it was over 200 kilometres away. As a result, it was concluded that those that buried Mungo Man intentionally carried the ochre to the site as a potential mark of respect.

If this was true, it would be one of the oldest pieces of evidence that ancient humans had developed rituals and beliefs about how their loved ones should be buried.

In fact, this use of red ochre is the earliest known uses of ochre for ceremonial purposes.

As famous as the remains of Mungo Man became, towards the end of the 20th century, there were growing concerns about where he should be kept.

He was originally transferred to the Australian National University in Canberra where much of the research was conducted on the remains.

It was here that analysis revealed that he would have stood around 196 cm tall and was likely around 50 years old at the time of his death.

However, the First Nations people of the Willandra Lakes area called for the return of a person that they considered to be one of their ancestors.

They wanted to ensure that his remains were kept on their traditional lands, which was an important cultural need of First Nations people living today.

After decades of campaigning, Mungo Man's remains were finally returned to the care of the Indigenous custodians in 2017.