What is Mungo Man and Mungo Lady?
Mungo Lady and Mungo Man are perhaps the most important human remains ever found in Australia. Their discovery re-wrote the ancient story of this land and its people and sent shock-waves around the world.
Are Mungo Man and Mungo Lady related?
Mungo woman (LM1) was discovered in 1969 and is one of the world’s oldest known cremations. The remains designated Mungo man (LM3) were discovered in 1974, and are dated to around 40,000 years old, the Pleistocene epoch, and are the oldest Homo sapiens (human) remains found on the Australian continent.
Where are the remains of Mungo Man and Mungo Lady today?
Canberra’s National Museum of Australia
Geologist Jim Bowler discovered the bones, known as Mungo Man and Mungo Lady, buried in the sands near Lake Mungo in western NSW in 1974, and the remains now sit in Canberra’s National Museum of Australia.
What was Mungo ladys life like?
The human population was at its peak, and Mungo Lady was the daughter of many mothers – the generations before her that had lived at Lake Mungo since the Dreamtime. She collected bush tucker such as fish, shellfish, yabbies, wattle seeds and emu eggs, nourished her culture and taught her daughters the women’s lore.
What caused Mungo Man’s death?
Scientists determined that Mungo Man had been a hunter-gatherer with arthritis who died around the age of 50. He was buried on his back with his hands crossed in his lap, and covered with red ochre.
How was Mungo Man and Mungo Lady discovered?
In 1968 geologist Jim Bowler discovered human bones around the now dry Lake Mungo in south-western New South Wales. Bowler and his colleagues named her Mungo Lady and discovered that she had been ritually buried.
How was Mungo Lady’s body preserved?
When Mungo Lady died, we know her family mourned for her. Her body was cremated, the remaining bones were crushed, burned again and then buried in the growing lunette.
Why were Mungo Man’s teeth so damaged?
When he was young Mungo Man lost his two lower canine teeth, possibly knocked out in a ritual. He grew into a man nearly 1.7m in height. Over the years his molar teeth became worn and scratched, possibly from eating a gritty diet or stripping the long leaves of water reeds with his teeth to make twine.
What did Mungo Man look like when he was found?
He spotted something he hadn’t seen before – the gleam of a white object poking out of the soil. When he looked closer he realised it was a human cranium. Bowler asked anthropologist Alan Thorne to help with the excavation. It revealed the almost complete skeleton of an adult male, who was designated Lake Mungo III.