Oldest Aussie human remains laid to rest

SYDNEY: The 40 000-year-old remains of an Aboriginal man that prompted a drastic rewrite of Australian history have been returned to his ancestral homeland after four decades of examination in Canberra.

The discovery of “Mungo Man” in 1974, named after the dry outback lake bed where the fully intact skeleton was found, doubled the known length of humans’ presence on the continent from 20 000 to 40 000 years.

But the bones’ removal for study to Canberra, 600km east of Lake Mungo, angered the indigenous community.

“We’ve been waiting all those years to get him back and I’m so glad he is back, to put him in his resting place,” said Joan Slade, an elder of the Aboriginal Ngiyampaa people, at a ceremony on Friday welcoming the remains back.

The skeleton, along with 104 other remains, arrived in a hearse with the Aboriginal flag on its side.

A traditional smoking ceremony, with green gum-leaves burned over a small fire, welcomed the remains back to the red soil and saltbush scrub of Lake Mungo.

“This, today, is one of those catalytic moments… it makes us, the traditional owners, custodians of our culture,” said elder Michael Young.

“(The remains) will be kept in a secret, safe place so that we can pass on to the next generations the legacy that these people have given us.”

Though subsequent discoveries have pushed back even further the date of humans’ first arrival in Australia, the finding of Mungo Man was at the time a huge advance.

His burial, with limbs stretched out, hands crossed across his groin and covered in ochre drawn from 200km away, helped prove the ancient age of Aboriginal civilisation – the world’s oldest continuing culture – dating back to when Neanderthals occupied Europe.

The Australian National University, whose researchers removed the remains, issued a formal apology when it returned them in 2015.

“We recognise that the removal of these ancestral remains caused ongoing grief to your communities and we apologise unreservedly,” it said. – Reuters