Bowler had no idea that the visit would transform his life. “All sorts of things were popping out of the ground that I had not expected to see,” he recalled. “It can be a harrowing experience for the elders,” says heritage officer Robert Kelly, who has worked in repatriation since 2003. “Mary Pappin told me: ‘Mungo Man and Mungo Lady, you didn’t find them. It is time for him to go home and rest now’ (Burgess 2015). Vote Now! "So I thank everybody who was involved in this momentous occasion. If even a casual visitor can have cosmic flashes in this otherworldly setting, Jim Bowler has come to feel he was guided by a higher force to Lake Mungo. When Mungo Man walked this landscape some 40,000 years ago, the freshwater lake was around 25 feet deep, teeming with wildlife and surrounded by forests dappled with golden wattle. “It felt like a wave was washing over me,” he recalls. “They were ignorant savages, treacherous. Bowler was indeed sitting in the front seat of a silver Nissan, tapping away on his laptop and surrounded by a chaos of notes, pens and electrical cords. The Roman Empire ended roughly 1,500 years ago, Troy fell 3,200 years ago, the Epic of Gilgamesh was written around 4,000 years ago. Jason Kelly, a Mutthi Mutthi representative, was in the hearse on the last leg of the journey. He’s out there like Don Quixote.’” Scientists argued that the skeleton should be kept safe, since future developments in DNA research and improved X-ray tests might one day reveal new insights about the diet, life expectancy, health and cultural practices of early humans, or about mankind’s origins. Mile after mile of flat scrub was interrupted only by the occasional tree rising like a stark sculpture, a mailbox fashioned out of an eight-gallon drum, or a silent township with little more than a gas station. Mungo Man returned to country. As the smoking ceremony began, recalls Jason Kelly, a willy willy (dust devil) swept from the desert and across the casket. “But don’t worry, mate, he’s safe. Scholars now regard the sea voyage as a major event in human history: It was “at least as important as Columbus’ journey to America or the Apollo 11 expedition to the moon,” according to historian Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. At dusk, I climbed the Walls of China, crossing the rippling Sahara-like dunes and skirting the ribs of a wombat and shards of calcified tree trunk among the craggy spires. After decades of campaigning, Mungo Man was finally returned to traditional owners in November 2017. By its serene lake, I met Michael Pickering, director of the Repatriation Program at the National Museum of Australia, which oversaw Mungo Man’s hand-over. Mr Bowler said state and federal governments should do more to create a respectful final place of rest. Now 88 and a legend in Australia, Bowler lives in Brighton, a tidy seaside suburb of Melbourne, a city of Victorian monuments once considered the most stolidly “British” in the Antipodes. In 2003, a young Aboriginal ranger, Mary Pappin Jr. (granddaughter of the activist Alice Kelly), made an astounding discovery near Lake Mungo: more than 560 footprints, later shown to be around 21,000 years old. In the spirit of Reconciliation the university apologised to the traditional … He saw the pale shapes in the desert below and recognized them as fossilized lake beds. The remains of an Aboriginal man who lived at Lake Mungo in Western New South Wales 42,000 years ago have been returned to Country in a series of traditional ceremonies across the ACT and NSW. Back at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, he suggested to a middle-aged student, a soulful geologist working on ancient climate change in Australia, Jim Bowler, to investigate. A network of heritage officers began systematically connecting with Aboriginal communities all over Australia to empty museum collections. Mungo Man was returned in 2017 and buried in the sand.) Though the bones were officially returned to three Indigenous tribal groups in 2015, it was only this week that they were repatriated and laid to rest. Mungo Man was transported back to Country in a restored Aboriginal hearse with 103 other ancestral remains. The following millennia saw climate change on an epic scale. (Other species had likely first migrated two million years ago; Neanderthals evolved 400,000 years ago.) These 42,000 year old ritual burials are some of the oldest remains of … The hearse was bearing the remains of an individual who died in this isolated spot over 40,000 years ago­—one of the oldest Homo sapiens ever found outside Africa. “That date, 42,000 years, was published as a ‘discovery.’ That’s not true. At every stop on the way—in sonorously named bush towns like Wagga Wagga, Narrandera and Gundagai—the vehicle was met by jubilant crowds. Mungo Man returned to country The Australian Government joins in welcoming the return of Mungo Man and other ancestors to their country – the World Heritage listed Willandra Lakes Region. Traditional owners say the return of the remains of the historic Mungo Man, who was removed by scientists from his resting place more than 40 years ago, will provide closure and is a step toward reconciliation. They had messages to deliver, such as telling white Australians that the time has come to acknowledge the injustices inflicted upon Aboriginal people. In reality, very few scientists, probably fewer than ten, have been privileged with the opportunity to study the remains. It was one of the more cinematic funeral caravans in recent memory. “Mobs” of kangaroos bounded by, along with strutting emus. Tensions reached such a point by the end of the 1970s that the 3TTs placed an embargo on excavation at Lake Mungo. Mungo Man had lived over 40,000 years ago. "Our removal of remains and taking them to the university was seen by Aboriginal people as a totally unjustifiable," he told RN's Awaye. He had been ceremoniously buried; his hands were folded over the pelvis and traces of red ocher enveloped him from cranium to loin. (He studied for a time to be a Jesuit priest.) Bowler and his family were instrumental in facilitating the repatriation of the remains. The megafauna’s fate was sealed when Homo sapiens landed on the Australian coast sometime between 47,000 and 65,000 years ago. But Mungo Man was intact, a unique piece of prehistoric evidence. The Australian National University still has Mungo man and while the elders feel the need that Mungo man and Lady should be returned to their home it is still being a difficulty with weather being a constant issue. It’s time for them to go home.”. He went back to where he had found Mungo Lady and followed the same geological “horizon.” He spotted white bone. Aboriginal culture was dismissed as primitive; the few British scientists who considered the Aboriginal people believed they had landed relatively recently. Discovered by geologist Jim Bowler in 1974 in Mungo National Park in south-west New South Wales, the skeleton was dubbed Mungo Man. “Rooms full of bones.” Locating the Aboriginal communities to return them to involved serious detective work. Buildings—old butcher shops, trade union clubs, barbers—sport Wild West-style verandas with ornate iron lace. But an impasse remained over the fate of Mungo Man. He was dressed as if he were about to head out on safari any minute, with a khaki Bushman’s vest and an Akubra hat by his side, although his white chin beard gave him the air of an Edwardian theologian. Traditional owners hosted a welcome home ceremony attended by hundreds to celebrate the historic return of the 42,000-year-old remains of Mungo Man to his original resting place. Mungo Man returns to Country. Neatly stacked in a back room were some 300 cardboard boxes, some as small as shoe boxes, each one containing Aboriginal bones. This was mythic Australia, and far from lifeless. “The center of the debate is: Who owns the past?” says Dan Rosendahl, executive officer of the Willandra Lakes Region World Heritage Area. Whites “harvested” Aboriginal skeletons, often by pillaging grave sites or even after bloodbaths, for study and display in museums in Britain, Europe and the States, in some cases to “prove” that indigenous races were lower on the evolutionary scale than Anglo-Saxons. Cheryl and Faye trusted their 'friend' Melissa Caddick with their life savings. “The unlikely probability of being there just when Mungo Man’s skeleton was starting to appear—and find things thoroughly intact!” he laughs. “It’s not pretty, but very functional,” Pickering said, as he unlocked the door. What are the rules to for you to keep this Christmas COVID-free? Media Releases. Before 2005 only a few papers from a couple of different authors were … Geologist Jim Bowler found Mungo Man and said the profound scientific discoveries could not have taken place if he was not moved. “I could see the impact of climatic change on the landscape,” he explained. “I wanted to live somewhere I could see the rotation of the earth,” he explained as we hit the road in a 4x4. “The elders had waited a long, long time for this to happen,” says Robert Kelly, an Aboriginal heritage officer who was present. He’s done his job. “We were really upset.” The first quiet protests over archaeological work had begun years earlier over Mungo Lady, led by her mother, Alice Kelly, who would turn up with other women at new digs and demand an explanation, carrying a dictionary so she could understand the jargon. The men were mostly on the outside of the group, perhaps in hunting formation; at one point, they paused and rested their spears. After generations of ignoring Aboriginal appeals, the country is now a world leader in returning human remains as a form of apology for its tragic colonial history. Reporter Nakari Thorpe was there for this historic event. Turning evolution upside down. As late as the 1960s, the region was still so little known to white Australians that the lakes had no names. Others came from museums in the United States, Britain and Europe, all of which have held Aboriginal skeletons for study or display. The remains of Mungo Man and the other ancient Willandra Lakes people were returned by the ANU to traditional owners in 2015, when Mutthi Mutthi elder Mary Pappin observed: ‘We are so grateful he is going to be coming home. “Other indigenous communities were watching worldwide,” Pickering, a soft-spoken character in his early 60s who travels the world dealing with human remains, said proudly as we climbed into his SUV. It was some of the earliest uncovered evidence of ritualistic burial in the world, and proved that early Aboriginal Australians had a robust belief and burial system — around the same time as Neanderthals were roaming Europe. We learn so much more from repatriation than letting bones gather dust in storage.”, All these emotions came together in November 2017 as the hand-carved casket was laid out at Lake Mungo and covered with leaves. There, a crowd of several hundred people, including Australian government officials, archaeologists and representatives of Aboriginal groups from across the continent, fell into a reverent silence when they spotted the ghostly vehicle on the horizon kicking up orange dust. Today, its broad, empty highways are lined with Art Deco monuments and avant-garde structures scattered like giant Lego blocks. At Lake Mungo in the Lake Mungo National Park in New South Wales, the male skeleton of this Indigenous Australian, now known as Mungo Man, lived there thousands of years ago. “I was clobbered!” he laughs now. Analysis has shown that Mungo Man was around 50 years old — a good age for a hunter-gatherer. Did our species overwhelm the other known human species such as Homo neanderthalensis and Homo erectus, or interbreed with them? My final goal was the hallucinogenic landscape of Lake Mungo itself, which is gaining cult status among Aussie travelers as the Rift Valley of the Pacific Rim. "[It is] a great celebration this event, as he returns to country, [but] there is also a great sadness that in 43 years and despite great pressure on New South Wales and federal governments there is still no proper memorial place," he said. But society benefits from other forms of knowledge as well. Share Mungo Culture Mungo Lady and Mungo Man Where are Mungo Lady and Mungo Man today? Ever since, it has been a pilgrimage site for gay men, hosting weekly transvestite shows. In the pages of earliest Australian history his name stands out, and we have failed to make a final resting place for a historic remains.". Scientists trace human origins to Africa 2.5 million years ago, when the genus Homo first evolved. 'Mungo Man': Bones of Australia's 42,000-year-old man returned to Aboriginal tribes for burial. His first discovery—a skeleton that would be dubbed “Mungo Lady”—was, in retrospect, a haphazard affair. This repatriation journey is a momentous one for the Paakantyi/Barkandji, Mutthi Mutthi and Ngiyampaa peoples who campaigned so long to bring their ancestors back to country. Next to the body were the remains of fire. The only sound was the wind moaning through the pine trees. In a neighborhood with warehouses selling industrial appliances in the shade of stringy eucalyptuses, Pickering stopped at a security gate and punched in a code to open it; only after more codes, special keys and signing a logbook could we enter a cavernous museum storage facility crowded with relics, like a theater prop room. “This is the only place I can get a little peace,” he laughed. Science is not a bad thing. (Others suggest the Aboriginal arrival in Australia was 60,000 years ago, which pushes the starting date of migration back even further.). He’s done his job. Now, Mungo Man has made a final return to his ancestral home. He spent weeks exploring on a motorbike, naming the lakes and the major geological layers after sheep stations: Gol Gol, Zanci, Mungo. 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But not all of them want to handle the remains, Pickering said, often asking staff to do it instead. They found you!’” he says. My sojourn began in Australia’s capital, Canberra—Down Under’s version of Brasília—an artificial city created as a gateway to the continent’s vast hinterland. Mungo Man surfaced precisely at a time when Australia was wrestling with a crisis in race relations that dates back to the colonial era. Beyond that, time unraveled. The macabre trade continued in Australia until the 1940s (as it did for Native American remains in the U.S.); the last official expedition, a joint Australian-U.S. effort involving the Smithsonian Institution and others that would become controversial, occurred in 1948. The native bird life was raucous, brilliant colored and poetically named—lousy jacks, mulga parrots, rosellas, willy wagtails and lorikeets. My guide was a U.S.-raised artist named Clark Barrett, who moved to Broken Hill 40 years ago so he could fall off the map. 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