Study underway to create the first archive of human evolution at Mungo

A foundational project is currently underway at Lake Mungo (Australia) and those lakes that abound it to document the history of human settlement, past environmental change and landscape evolution that has occurred in this area. This immense undertaking comes after a long hiatus of research being conducted here and hopes to provide the first systematic archive of its archaeological traces.

Documenting the history of human settlement seems like an epic task in any part of the world; in the stark beauty of the Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area, it involves tracing back no less than 45,000 years.

Upon arriving to the now dry lake bed which lies at the heart of Mungo National Park, it is not hard to appreciate the ancient nature of this part of the world - it is one of the oldest places outside of Africa to have been occupied by modern humans.

The site of the world's oldest known cremation and ritual ochre burial, as well as the longest trail of ancient human footprints, surprisingly little is known about the people who lived here.

Enter La Trobe University's palaeolithic archaeologist, Dr Nicola Stern, whose Mungo Archaeology Project hopes to redress this shortfall in our collective knowledge.

"There's an untold story at Mungo; Mungo is famous because of Mungo Lady, Mungo Man; a trail of fossil footprints," says Dr Stern.

"We know surprisingly little about how people actually lived in this landscape over 45,000 years - and that's really what I'm trying to document by looking at the archaeological traces in the Mungo lunette."

The Mungo lunettes are half-moon shaped sand dunes built from ancient layers of the earth's surface and form the 'Walls of China' - a major drawcard for visitors to the World Heritage site that is Mungo National Park.

Containing rich deposits of information, the lunettes have preserved hundreds of rare, snapshot images of Australia's earliest history and provide a unique record of the ways in which the first settlers may have adapted to the changes to their climate over time.

They form the basis for Dr Stern'a foundational research into this narrative of human evolution.

"It's the foundation - there's a lot that we could do if we had already had this information," she says.

It is not only the scientific community who have longed for this work to be done; elders from the region's Aboriginal tribal groups are also supportive of the project and are working in collaboration with Dr Stern's team to monitor it.

"Finding out what's there, and then monitoring what's happening to what's there, is something that the elders tell me they have wanted for a very long period of time."

With such an endeavour, Dr Stern has a loyal team of around 20 others working with her and says there will be more to come on board in the future.

"Over time we will be training people and hope that they will pick this up and carry it on into the future - but there is a certain, you know knowledge and expertise that is required to figure out how to tackle a record on this scale."

From ABC

Rock art in Australia could be world's oldest

A rock painting that appears to be of a bird that went extinct about 40,000 years ago has been discovered in northern Australia. If confirmed, this would be the oldest rock art anywhere in the world, pre-dating the famous Chauvet cave in southern France by some 7,000 years.

The red ochre painting was found in southwest Arnhem Land by a member of the Jawoyn Association, which represents the local traditional owners of the land. When Robert Gunn, an archaeologist brought in to document rock art in the area, saw the painting he immediately thought it looked like Genyornis, an emu-like, big-beaked, thick-legged bird that went extinct along with other Australian megafauna between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago.

"But I bit my tongue, and sent it off to a recognized authority, palaeontologist Peter Murray in Darwin, to see what he thought. When he confirmed that it probably was Genyornis, it was pretty exciting," Robert says.

Robert thinks there are two possible interpretations: either this is among the oldest rock paintings in the world, or Genyornis went extinct later than anybody thinks.

But there's no good archaeological or paleontological evidence that Genyornis survived longer than about 40,000 years ago, says Bruno David, an archaeologist and rock art specialist at Monash University in Melbourne, who has seen photos of the painting and who has worked in the region. "If this is Genyornis, then it has to be more than 40,000 years old," he says.

Robert is now planning to record the site in much more detail, and next year Bruno and his team will excavate the area thoroughly. A rock fall created the exposed face on which the painting was made. By studying buried samples from beneath the fallen rock, the team should be able to work out the age of the rock face. If it is older than 40,000 years, this won't prove that the painting is that old, but it will support the idea that it could be.

Some rock art specialists strongly suspect that the painting is younger. The oldest pigment found on a rock anywhere in Australia is 28,000 years old, but the image is so covered with dust and other rocky accretions, it's impossible to know what it looked like.

The Genyornis site is a shallow shelter and most such paintings in Australia are thought to be less than about 5,000 years old; older ones are thought to have been eroded away by weather. The Chauvet artworks, in contrast, are deep inside a cave that was sealed for more than 20,000 years. However, some of the sandstone in Arnhem Land does have the advantage of being extremely hard and durable.

Bruno says it's important to be cautious. The features of the painted bird match the features of the extinct Genyornis very closely, but this might be a coincidence, he says. "It's possible that at some time in the past, people were painting animals that didn't necessarily match living species - or that the bird wasn't a physical bird, but an animal that was part of the local, ancestral Jawoyn Dreaming beliefs," he says. And if this is the case, the painting could have been made at any time in the past.

But either way it's exciting, he says. "If it's Genyornis, then it's of extreme significance. If not, it's very significant because it tells us something about the way people understood their landscapes."

From Australian Geographic

And the award for oldest most southern occupation site goes to...

Australian archaeologists have discovered what they believe to be a 40,000 year old tribal meeting ground.  The site, which also appears to have been used as the last place of refuge used by Aboriginal tribes against white settlers, was discovered during an archaeological survey for upcoming roadwork.

The new discovery represents the oldest most southern occupation site in the world.  The dates come courtesy of nearly three million artifacts, including stone tools, shellfish fragments and food scraps, as well as soil dating and luminescence readings.

Further information can be found via these links:
Australian archaeologists uncover 40,000-year-old site
ANCIENT TRIBAL MEETING GROUND FOUND IN AUSTRALIA