When we think of ancient history, most people think of the pyramids, Stonehenge, the ziggurats of Mesopotamia, and perhaps the Greek, Roman, Aztec or Mayan civilisations.
We look across the seas to other lands and marvel at the knowledge unearthed in excavations or present in structures such as the great pyramids of Egypt. We think about how long ago these societies flourished.
Yet, the story of our continent and its people holds something that places us apart from the stories of other societies and cultures.
It is a story told in two parts: in the traditional stories of the Aboriginal peoples of this land and — more recently — in the understanding of those scientists who have come upon evidence that confirms these stories.
In the south-west of NSW, in an area called the Willandra Lakes — the traditional lands of the Barkandji/Paakantyi, Mutthi Mutthi and Ngiyampaa people – Jim Bowler, a geologist looking for evidence of the impact of climate changes from the last ice age, about 20,000 years ago, discovered the ancient bones of a woman in the dunes of Lake Mungo.
Lake Mungo — a lake that has been dry for over 14,000 years.
The discovery in 1968 that Mungo Woman, who lived about 40,000 to 42,000 years ago, was cremated before her bones were ritually buried, was one of the earliest anatomically modern human remains found anywhere in the world. It is the oldest known cremation in the world and evidence of the early emergence of humanity’s spiritual beliefs.
This discovery began to shape a different story of the settlement of our continent.
Then, on February 26, 1974 — just over 50 years ago — Jim Bowler made another extraordinary discovery at Lake Mungo. This time, it was the remains of a man: Mungo Man. Once again, there was evidence of a careful, ritualised burial, with the arms being crossed and the hands placed together in the lap. Red ochre powder, used on the body before burial, was not from the area but hundreds of kilometres away.
This second accidental finding revolutionised Western thinking about Australia’s human history. This find changed not only the story of this continent but also our understanding of human habitation.
The discovery confirmed what First Nations people have always known — that they have always been here and are the original people of this continent.
Their stories, which go back into the mists of time, now were being confirmed by scientific knowledge.
The Willandra Lakes were inhabited 50,000 years ago — in the Pleistocene period, well before the Ice Age — when the area was like the Garden of Eden, with plentiful water and teeming wildlife. Fossils of now-extinct megafauna and evidence of extensive occupation and complex food-gathering practices — middens, shellfish remains, fossilised fish, stone tools, hearths — have now provided evidence of this occupation.
This occupation is so far back in time that it is hard to grasp the mind-blowing number of generations. As a comparison, it has been 236 years since the British arrived on these shores — only about nine generations ago.
Mungo Woman and Mungo Man were dated at about 42,000 years old — about 39,000 years before the pyramids were built in ancient Egypt.
The extraordinary aspect of all this is the knowledge that the Barkandji/Paakantyi, Mutthi Mutthi and Ngiyampaa people’s ancestors have walked on this landscape for hundreds of generations. They have witnessed and adapted to extraordinary climatic and environmental change.
Ancient footprints from about 20,000 years ago have been found in the claypans of the Willandra Lakes — the largest group of fossil footprints in the world. Footprints from the ‘Old Ones’ tell a story of a family group with a child and a one-legged man.
The Barkandji/Paakantyi, Mutthi Mutthi and Ngiyampaa have an unbroken connection to this place. Their deep knowledge of and connection to the Country is shaped by those thousands of years of experience. There is a living history, passed down from generation to generation, written in the landscape, stories and ceremonies.
Their deep knowledge offers us all a unique understanding of the Australian landscape and how it has evolved.
As Jim Bowler noted some time ago, “Non-indigenous Australians too often have a desperately limited frame of historical reference. The Lake Mungo region provides a record of land and people that we latter-day arrivals have failed to incorporate into our own Australian psyche. We have yet to penetrate the depths of time and cultural treasures revealed by those ancestors of Indigenous Australians.”
When we talk about the world’s oldest continuing culture, consider its deep richness and depths of knowledge. Consider also what we can learn from such an intimate and longstanding connection to place.
The Willandra Lakes Region, an ancient landscape formed by wind and water with extensive evidence of human habitation from the Pleistocene period (50,000 years ago), was added to the World Heritage List in 1981. It is regarded as a unique landmark in the study of human evolution.
It changed the global understanding of the development of modern humans.
Recently, Jim Bowler — now aged 94 — returned to Lake Mungo on the 50th anniversary of the discovery of Mungo Man. He joined Barkandji/Paakantyi, Mutthi Mutthi and Ngiyampaa representatives.
It was a time of reflection, of considering the message that the discovery of Mungo Woman and Mungo Man had given us.
“There is a need for healing — the need for dialogue between the different cultures has not been resolved. With the failure of the referendum, there is an urgent need to search for the healing glue. What is it that can now unite the nation? I’m suggesting it is the example of the Mungo people and their deep connection to the land and the spiritual dimension that embraces, as the humans most closely connected to the cosmos,” Bowler said.
Wamba Wamba and Mutthi Mutthi man Jason Kelly agrees.
“His (Bowler’s) proposal for a dialogue around Mungo is spot-on. My grandmother always promoted it as a place of healing. And as a place of education for all Australians … We have never come close to realising the potential of Mungo as a place of global cultural and spiritual and human importance,” he said.
“My nan and … the Elders that followed always talked about how Mungo Man and Mungo Lady came back for a reason.
“They came back for the future and the future generations to tell the story about the history of us.”
It is a history of this continent and a history we can all share.
Echoes of the ancients telling a story for us today. It is up to us now to listen and hear.
To find out more about the discoveries at Lake Mungo, watch Message from Mungo on SBS on Demand.
To read the UNESCO assessment of the Willandra Lakes area as being of Outstanding Universal Value, visit: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/167