On the Sand Dunes of the World Heritage Site, Mungo Lunette in south-western New South Wales, Australia
The Mungo Lunette is an extremely significant archaeological site in Mungo National Park, which forms part of the Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area. Artifacts unearthered here confirm that Aborigines have the oldest continuous culture on earth. In the late 1960s human remains, called 'Mungo Woman' were found in its layers of sediment built up over the millenia. In 1974, the fully articulated skeleton of Mungo Man was found nearby, confirming that Aborigines had occupied this area for the past 50,000 years. Five years ago, DNA testing on Mungo Man's bones by Australian National University scientists pushed his age back again, this time to more than 60,000 years. Significantly, the research group's findings challenge the conventional out-of-Africa theory of evolution that all living people are descended from Homo sapiens coming from Africa more than 100,000 years ago. Mungo Man's DNA was completely modern and his existence in southeastern Australia so long ago raises the possibility that humans actually evolved from different regions of the world.
Size: 5900px × 3377px
Location: World Heritage Site, Mungo Lunette, south-western New South Wales, Australia
Photo credit: © edith dorsey raff / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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