Mongoose Man

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Mongoose Man

As Mungo Man , in the scientific literature Lake Mungo 3 (LM3) or Willandra Lake Human 3 (WLH3) , the fossil remains of an early inhabitant of the Australian continent are referred to, which were dated to an age of about 40,000 years. The fossil was discovered in 1974 at the parched Lake Mungo , part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Willandra Lake Region in New South Wales , and according to this dating it comes from the Upper Paleolithic . It is considered to be the oldest remnant of an anatomically modern human ( Homo sapiens ) found in Australia.

Discovery and Retention

Relief Map: Australia
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Lake Mungo​
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Australia
Satellite image of the Willandra Lakes region. Lake Mungo is labeled 5. The blue point represents the place where Mungo Man was found . (In red: Mungo Lady )

Mungo Man was discovered by geologist Jim Bowler on February 26, 1974. Previous heavy rains had exposed its bones. In the following days, Bowler and the archaeologist Alan Thorne (1939–2012), both members of the Australian National University , exposed the find. The skeleton lay on the edge of Lake Mungo , one of a series of dry lakes in what is now Mungo National Park . Five years earlier, Bowler had found another, albeit cremated, skeleton about 500 meters west of the site, Mungo Lady . The Willandra Lake Region has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1981, among other things because of the archaeological finds, including Mungo Man .

After his death, Mungo Man was lying on his back with his head turned to the right, his legs angled slightly to the right and with his hands crossed in his lap about 80 to 100 cm deep in the sand. At the time of the excavation, this cover was blown to within a few centimeters. The place was southeast and leeward a sand dune. In the Grabeinfüllung was red ocher - granules found near the head was charcoal as the remainder of a fire. It is the earliest occurrence of a sophisticated and artistic funeral ritual in Australia; this aspect of the discovery was considered particularly significant as it indicates that cultural traditions in Australia had existed longer than previously thought. In addition, the find of ocher is considered remarkable because ocher does not occur in the vicinity of Lake Mungo, but must have been brought from a greater distance; this indicates a network of trading relationships.

Since its excavation, Mungo Man has been kept in a room at the Australian National University ; only temporarily were bones taken to other laboratories for examination. Besides Thorne, the trustees of the bones were the three tribes of the Aborigines who traditionally own the land around the Willandra Lakes: Paakantji , Mutthi Mutthi and Ngyiampaa . The Aborigines demanded that their ancestor's bones rest undisturbed "in his traditional land and not in a safe or office in Canberra". Since Mungo National Park has only been protected under the National Parks and Wildlife Act of 1974 since 1979 , relics like Mungo Man , which were removed before 1979, did not need to be turned over to traditional owners. It was only since 1992 that the Australian Archaeological Association established a Code of Ethics that the legacy of the indigenous population belongs to the descendants of the indigenous population. Bowler said in an interview that he would act differently today with what he now knew about Aboriginal culture. Nowadays he would find out the traditional owners and work with them.

On November 17, 2017, the remains of Mungo Man were returned to their location at Lake Mungo and buried there.

Description of the fossil

The skeleton is relatively poorly preserved. The right side and the base of the skull are absent in the skull; the skull is not complete either, but the lower jaw is well preserved. Except for the ulna of the right forearm, all bones show damage to the joint surfaces. Furthermore, parts of the pelvis are missing . Due to osteoarthritis of the lumbar vertebrae , right elbow, and wrist, and severe wear and tear on the teeth exposing the pulp, it is likely that Mungo Man was around 50 years old when he died.

New studies determine Mungo Man's height based on the length of his tubular bones at an extraordinary 196 cm.

gender

Since crucial parts of the pelvis and skull are missing, the jaw was used in the first description of Mungo Man by Bowler and Thorne to determine the sex. It was found that the dimensions of the jaw just fall within the range of the male physique. However, this determination method is controversial because it is based on measurements of the jaws of today's Aborigines, which are extremely delicate compared to prehistoric finds; Moreover, this method is not considered reliable even for determining the sex of today's Aborigines. Discussions were also triggered by the thigh bone: The central shaft is so thick that it can most likely be assigned to a man, but a robust and not a graceful man. Arthritic changes in the right elbow are interpreted as a consequence of throwing a javelin while hunting, which also indicates a man. The type of wear and tear on the teeth is seen as typically feminine, as this usually comes from the manufacture of yarn.

As a further indication of the male sex, Thorne assessed that the Mungo Man's hands were clasped in front of the pubic bone , probably to protect the penis . The objection is made that although it is the preferred burial position for Aboriginal men nowadays, there is no evidence that this position was restricted to one gender in the past.

The paleanthropologist Peter Brown carried out his own research and compared a number of available measurements on the skull and jaw on the one hand with Aborigines from the Holocene and on the other hand with the remains of robust people from the Pleistocene from the excavation sites in Kow Swamp, Coobool Creek and Nacurrie . Compared with the values ​​of today's Aborigines, Mungo Man can be classified as male, compared with the values ​​from the Pleistocene as female. Brown also noted that the morphology above the eye is decidedly feminine because the bulges above the eye are absent. All in all, he sums up that the Mungo Man , if it were a man, would be - apart from the thigh bone - a very graceful and small man. If Mungo Man were a woman, she would have been quite robust and tall. The morphological values ​​would support both possibilities.

The question of whether man or woman or graceful or robust played a role in the course of later discussions about the settlement of Australia: Thorne claimed that Mungo Man belonged to a different population than the people of Kow Swamp. From this he deduced that the Aborigines were direct descendants of two different waves of immigration: the more robust people of Kow Swamp were direct descendants of Homo erectus from Java , the Java people , while the graceful people of Lake Mungo were the more graceful Homo erectus from China, Beijing - people , descended. Thorne challenged the out-of-Africa theory of human evolution, according to which all modern humans descend from common African ancestors who had only left Africa during the last 200,000 years; the populations of Homo erectus recorded on Java and near Beijing , however, had left Africa more than a million years ago. Even the first studies on mitochondrial Eve (1987) and the Adam of the Y chromosome (2000), which also included genetic material from today's Aborigines, contradicted Thorne's hypothesis about the relationship between the Aborigines and the Java and Peking people and confirmed the out-of -Africa Theory.

Other scientists also point out that these few fossils do not necessarily have to be ascribed to different ethnic groups, but that on the one hand they are male, robust and on the other hand, feminine, graceful bones, since Aboriginal people have a pronounced sexual dimorphism .

Dating

Stratigraphic layers near Mungo Man

The first estimates of the age of Mungo Man were published in 1976 by the team of paleoanthropologists at the Australian National University who unearthed the fossil. They estimated that Mongoose Man lived 28,000 to 32,000 years ago. They did not directly test the remains of Mungo Man , but developed their estimate from stratigraphic comparisons with the Mungo Lady .

In 1987, electron spin resonance dating was performed on one of the bone fragments from Mungo Man's skeleton, which led to an estimate of 31,000 ± 7000 years, but this method of dating is only reliable for teeth and not for bones.

A more recent estimate of 62,000 ± 6000 years, published by a team at the Australian National University headed by Thorne in 1999, led to controversy. This value was determined by combining data from uranium-thorium dating , electron spin resonance dating and optically stimulated luminescence dating of the bones, as well as soil samples taken 300 meters away from the grave site. Thorne concluded from these data that the Australian continent must have been settled around 70,000 years ago. This publication in the prestigious Journal of Human Evolution prompted Bowler two issues later to point out in the same journal that the bank at the deepest point of the archaeological excavations at Lake Mungo had been determined to be 43,000 years old, which is why Mungo Man were no older and says that Thorne's conclusions "stretch the already questionable limits of credibility of this publication even further." Richard Gillespie, a specialist in the dating of fossils, also describes in this issue the problems associated with uranium-thorium dating on tooth enamel , and also considers the fossil Mungo Man to be significantly younger than 60,000 years.

In 2003, a group of scholars from various Australian universities, led by Bowler, reached a new consensus that Mungo Man was around 40,000 years old. This age largely corresponds to the stratigraphic evidence. Various dating methods were used by scientists from various universities to determine this, including optically stimulated luminescence on quartz and gamma spectroscopy of samples taken from newly dug furrows near the excavation site. A confirmation came from a dating of the grave filling in 2005: When the skeleton was found, the excavators had soaked sand blocks with synthetic resin and recovered them. These blocks had been kept in a university depot for thirty years and could now be examined. Grains of sand that had been reached by light in the meantime could be identified because of their strongly differing values. From the inside of a block, however, grains were found that had not been exposed to light since being poured into the grave. They provided an age of 41,000 ± 4,000 years and thus confirmed the previously recognized dating.

The age of approx. 40,000 years makes him, together with Mungo Lady , one of the oldest anatomically modern humans (see list of hominin fossils ) whose remains have been found outside of Africa.

Mitochondrial DNA Study

From Adcock et al. (2001) proposed phylogenesis of the mtDNA of past and present humans

In 2001, a scientific team from the Australian National University led by Gregory Adcock analyzed the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of the bone fragments of the Mungo Man skeleton. The mtDNA was compared to samples from a variety of other ancient Australian skeletons, an mt DNA sequence from a Neanderthal man, and contemporary Australian Aborigines and other modern humans. The results showed that the Mungo Man - although he is anatomically in the normal range of a modern person - descends from a different direct female ancestor than the mitochondrial Eve, the common ancestor in the female line of all people living today. In many modern humans, however, a segment of his mtDNA is present as an insertion in chromosome 11 of the DNA; this insertion would then have taken place in an even older, common ancestor. More recent studies from 2016 (see below), however, suggest that this segment comes precisely from contamination with modern DNA.

Adcock interpreted the results of the Mungo Man's mtDNA study in relation to the Out-of-Africa theory as follows: “Our data pose a serious challenge to the interpretation of current human mtDNA variations as an indication of the new Out-of-Africa- Theory. A separate mtDNA line in an individual whose morphology is within the current range and who lived in Australia means that anatomically modern humans were among those who were replaced and that part of that replacement happened in Australia. " Adcock supports Thorne's hypothesis, according to which Australia was settled by two waves of immigration: According to this, Mungo Man is the descendant of the first wave of settlers from Asia. After that, a second wave of immigration appeared, coming from Africa, and their mitochondrial DNA also prevailed among the Aborigines.

Various articles took up the results and criticized the findings. It is unlikely that ancient DNA (aDNA) could be found in the remains of the Mungo Man , as experience with the analysis of Neanderthal DNA had shown how difficult it was to reconstruct such ancient DNA, even though their bones were in the cold Environment of Europe would have had better climatic conditions than in Australia to survive. Therefore, the probability that DNA could be extracted from Mungo Man's bones is very low. Instead, it is suspected that it could have been contaminants, as Adcock's group did not adhere to the standards for processing aDNA. After all, there are different mathematical models with which an mtDNA family tree can be calculated; when a larger number'm trapped samples of Africans and Aborigines, then be Mungo Man part of the family tree from the time of the mitochondrial Eve today living humans. In addition, the results of the mtDNA study are compatible with the out-of-Africa theory if the types of mitochondrial Eva and Mungo Man both came from Africa and one line died out while the other remained to this day.

The Aborigines, represented by the Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area Aboriginal Elders Committee, allowed a new DNA analysis of the remains in 2014. The report published in 2016 confirmed the reservations of many scientists: The bones were contaminated by at least five European DNA donors. It was not possible to extract mitochondrial DNA sequences from the test material itself.

However, it was possible to extract mtDNA from a skeleton of the Willandra Lake finds. She belongs to haplogroup S2 and attests to an Aboriginal descent. A further analysis allowed a membership to haplogroup S2a1a with three known, living descendants to be specified. This is the WLH4 find, which was recovered by Wilfred Shawcross (University of Auckland) in 1974. In contrast to the other Willandra Lakes finds, the excellently preserved and carefully excavated skeleton is only slightly mineralized. It is undated to this day, but is considered to be considerably younger than the other Willandra Lake finds because of its low calcination; a pre-contact age or a date near the first European contact is assumed. Heupink et al. indicate a late Holocene age ("∼3,000–500 y BP").

Reburial

From 1974 on, Lake Mungo 3 was kept at the Australian National University. The Aboriginal peoples Mutthi Mutthi , Ngyiampaa and Paakantyi / Barkandji as traditional owners of the Willandra Lakes pushed through the handover of the remains to the Aboriginal communities in 2015. At first they stayed in a special facility at the university. There were two trends within the Aborigines: One wanted a dignified building on Lake Mungo, in which the remains could both be kept and be available to science, as far as the Aborigines would allow it. The others wanted to be reburied at the original location. However, after there was neither an agreement on the procedure nor an agreement with the government, the bones were buried in the ground on November 17, 2017 in a coffin made partly from fossil wood. On the 50th anniversary of the discovery of Mungo Lady, Jim Bowler regretted the anonymous burial of Mungo Man and Mungo Lady on the grounds of the visitor center. He calls on the Australian government, as the holder of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, "to bring the remains from the deposit to a central place of honor". Doing less would add further shame to an already ill-treated heritage.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Mulvaney DJ et al. (1999): Prehistory of Australia pp. 162 ff., ISBN 1-86448-950-2
  2. ↑ Nominated by John Mulvaney (1925-2016). UNESCO World Heritage Willandra Lakes Region , accessed July 9, 2018
  3. ↑ JM Bowler, AG Thorne (1976): Human remains from Lake Mungo: Discovery and excavation of Lake Mungo III. In (RL Kirk and AG Thorne) The Origin of the Australians , pp. 127-138. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, quoted from personal communication by JM Bowler with Schomynv , email dated October 15, 2009
  4. ↑ a b James M. Bowler et al .: New ages for human occupation and climatic change at Lake Mungo, Australia. In: Nature . Volume 421, 2003, pp. 837-840, doi : 10.1038 / nature01383 , full text (PDF; 501 kB) ( Memento from January 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) PMID 12594511
  5. ^ P. Hiscock (2007) The archeology of ancient Australia. ISBN 0-415-33811-5
  6. ↑ S. Colley (2002): p. 164
  7. ↑ T. Ormsby (2004): Kennewick Man Meets Lady Mungo: An International Look at Repatriation. Thesis at Flinders University
  8. ↑ The Australian art history archeology museum artefacts remains ethics  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. March 29, 2008, accessed October 21, 2009@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.theaustralian.news.com.au  
  9. ↑ dpa : 42,000 year old Australian aborigines buried. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . November 17, 2017, archived from the original on November 17, 2017 ; accessed on November 17, 2017 .
  10. ↑ a b c J. M. Bowler, AG Thorne (1976): Human remains from Lake Mungo: Discovery and excavation of Lake Mungo III. In (RL Kirk and AG Thorne) The Origin of the Australians , pp. 127-138. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, quoted from Brown (2000)
  11. ↑ a b c S. G. Webb (1989): The Willandra Lakes Hominids Canberra: Department of Prehistory, Australian National University, quoted from Brown (2000)
  12. ^ "Abnormally tall", in: Mungo Archeological Digs. Evidence of Ancient Human Habitation Dating back over 40,000 Years.
  13. ^ A b c d Peter Brown: Australian Pleistocene variation and the sex of Lake Mungo 3. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 38, No. 5, 2000, pp. 743-749, doi : 10.1006 / jhev.1999.0400 , full text (PDF; 747 kB) ( Memento from January 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) PMID 10799264
  14. ^ A. Thorne et al .: Australia's oldest human remains: age of the Lake Mungo 3 skeleton. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 36, 1999, pp. 519-612, quoted from Brown (2003)
  15. ↑ DA Caddy et al. (1987): The aging chemist - can electron spin resonance (ESR) help In: (Ambrose W. and Mummery J. Eds.) Archaeometery: Further Australasian Studies , pp. 167-176
  16. ^ R. Grün (1987): Some remarks on ESR dating of bones. Ancient TL 5: 1-9
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  18. ^ JM Bowler et al .: Redating Australia's oldest human remains: a skeptic's view. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 38, 2000, pp. 719–729 PMID 10799261 page 725 ( further stretch the already questionable limits of the paper's credibility )
  19. ^ R. Gillespie et al .: On the reliability of age estimates for human remains at Lake Mungo. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 38, 2000, pp. 727-732 PMID 10799262
  20. ↑ Jon M. Olley, Richard G. Roberts, Hiroyuki Yoshida, James M. Bowler: Single-grain optical dating of grave-infill associated with human burials at Lake Mungo, Australia. In: Quaternary Science Reviews. Volume 25, Nos. 19-20, 2006, pp. 2469-2474. doi: 10.1016 / j.quascirev.2005.07.022
  21. ↑ Gregory J. Adcock et al .: Mitochondrial DNA sequences in ancient Australians: Implications for modern human origins. In: PNAS . Volume 98, No. 2, 2002, pp. 537-542 full text (PDF; 237 kB) PMID 11209053
  22. ↑ GJ Adcock (2000): p. 541 ( Our data present a serious challenge to interpretation of contemporary human mtDNA variation as supporting the recent out of Africa model. A separate mtDNA lineage in an individual whose morphology is within the contemporary range and who lived in Australia would imply both that anatomically modern humans were among those that were replaced and that part of the replacement occurred in Australia. )
  23. ↑ Colin I. Smith et al .: The thermal history of human fossils and the likelihood of successful DNA amplification. In: Journal of Human Evolution. Volume 45, No. 3, 2003, pp. 203-217, doi : 10.1016 / S0047-2484 (03) 00106-4 , full text (PDF; 195 kB) ( Memento from February 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) PMID 14580590
  24. ↑ a b A. Cooper et al .: Human Origins and Ancient Human DNA. In: Science . Volume 292, No. 5522, 2001, pp. 1655–1656, doi : 10.1126 / science.292.5522.1655 , full text for download (PDF) PMID 11388352
  25. ↑ Heupink TH, Subramanian S, Wright JL et al .: Ancient mtDNA sequences from the First Australians revisited. In: PNAS. Volume 113, No. 25, 2016, pp. 6892-6897, doi: 10.1073 / pnas.1521066113
  26. ↑ New DNA technology confirms Aboriginal people as first Australians. On: abc.net.au from June 7, 2016
  27. ↑ N. Nagle et al .: Aboriginal Australian mitochondrial genome variation - an increased understanding of population antiquity and diversity. In: Science Reports 2017; 7: 43041 doi: 10.1038 / srep43041
  28. ↑ Arthur C. Durband, Michael C. Westaway and Daniel Rayner RT: interproximal grooving of lower second molars of WLH4. In: Australian Archeology. Volume 75, No. 1, 2012, pp. 118-120, doi: 10.1080 / 03122417.2012.11681955
  29. ↑ Heupink et al. 2016: Table 1
  30. ^ World Heritage Places - Willandra Lakes Region. New South Wales. Australian Government Site on World Heritage Site Entry on the UNESCO World Heritage Center website ( English and French ).
    UNEP site with access to the World Heritage Information Sheet for Willandra
  31. ^ Ancestral Remains returned to traditional owners. Australian National University, November 6, 2015, accessed April 3, 2018 .
  32. ^ Mungo Man's long journey back to country. Australian National University, November 18, 2017, accessed April 3, 2018 .
  33. ↑ Michael Westaway: Comment: The return of First Australians' remains. SBS news, November 18, 2017, accessed April 3, 2018 .
  34. ^ The long way: fire and smoke for Mungo Man and the ancestors on their road home. TheAge.com, November 18, 2017, accessed April 3, 2018 .
  35. ↑ "to bring the remains [...] from storage to a central place of honor." Jim Bowler: Time to honor a historical legend: 50 years since the discovery of Mungo Lady. The Conversation Australia, July 6, 2018, accessed July 20, 2018 .
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on November 7, 2009 in this version .