Ancient History - Lake Mungo

Mungo man is one of the most important discoveries made in Australia which was believed to have lived approximately 40 thousand years ago. His remains were discovered in New South Wales Lake Mungo in 1972. The discovery of Mungo Man shows that the Indigenous population in Australia has been around for over 40 thousand years. It shows the earliest evidence of human existence in Australia. The body of Mungo Man was buried with ochre and his hands crossed and this shows that these traditions were performed over 40 thousand years ago and passed down from generation to generation. To put ochre on the body and have a burial symbolises that this tradition and culture has been around for a long time and the evidence is a reminder of the history of the land and the people.

A. C. H., was discovered in the loft space above the office of the Keeper of Zoology—the office Hinton had occupied from 1936 to 1945. This was the first concrete evidence implicating Hinton in the Piltdown hoax (Gardiner, 2003). Contained in the trunk were x teeth similarly stained to the materials discovered at Piltdown I, while several other materials, such as elephant and hippopotami teeth and bone fragments, had been whitened similar in fashion to the ‘cricket bat’ found at the Piltdown II site; the cricket bat having been made form an elephant femur. Hinton had experimented with bone and tooth staining (De Groote et al., 2016) predominantly staining them with iron to match the gravels of a Pleistocene era (Gardiner, 2003)… Also among Hinton’s effects, were eight human teeth that had been stained with iron, chromium, and manganese (Gardiner & Currant, 1996), similar to those of the Piltdown site. When the fluorine dating method was implemented this further incriminated Hinton as the findings from the Piltdown I site evidenced “a recent ape jaw and canine had been artificially modified, stained and planted at Piltdown I, along with parts of a similarly stained recent human skull” (De Groote, 2016, p. 4). The method Hinton practiced (evidenced by the findings in his trunk) was unique to him—a signature—therefore, implicating him as the Piltdown

The young earth and old earth was not always a debated topic. Before the 18th century not many people believed in an old earth, the majority of people believed that it was about 6,000 years old. But during the 1700s, people began to challenge the age of the earth. Three of the many men who advanced the theory

The earliest anatomically modern human remains found in Australia (and outside of Africa) are those of Mungo Man; they have been dated at 42,000 years old.[21][22] The initial comparison of the mitochondrial DNA from the skeleton known as Lake Mungo 3 (LM3) with that of ancient and modern Aborigines indicated that Mungo Man is not related to Australian Aborigines.[23] However, these findings have been met with a general lack of acceptance in scientific communities. The sequence is criticised as there has been no independent testing, and it has been suggested that the results may be due to posthumous modification and thermal degradation of the DNA.[24][25][26][27] Although the contested results seem to indicate that Mungo Man may have been an extinct subspecies that diverged before the most recent common ancestor of contemporary humans,[23] the administrative body for the Mungo National Park believes that present-day local Aborigines are descended from the Lake Mungo remains.[28] Independent DNA testing is unlikely as the indigenous custodians are not expected to allow further invasive investigations.[29]

Encyclopaedia Britannica also states that it is “proved to be a versatile technique of dating fossils and archaeological specimens from 500 to 50,000 years old” (1998). This method of age determination is dependent upon the decay of nitrogen and radiocarbon (Carbon-14) (Encyclopaediea Britannica, 1998; Opinions of Radiocarbon Dating, 2011). Carbon-14 is continually formed in nature by the interaction of neutrons with nitrogen-14 in the Earth’s atmosphere (Encyclopaediea Britannica, 1998; Opinions of Radiocarbon Dating, 2011) and all living things exchange the gas carbon-14 with the atmosphere surrounding them. The amount of carbon-14 exchanged into the living organism is perfectly balanced with its surroundings, but when an organism dies, they stop taking in the gas and that equilibrium is damaged. Because Carbon-14 slowly decays at a known rate called its “half-life” in a dead organism, scientists can figure out how long ago it had stopped exchanging carbon with its atmosphere. Thus, its age can be determined by measuring the amount of Carbon-14 in a sample (Hirst, 2017; Opinions of Radiocarbon Dating, 2017; Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit Research Laboratory for Archaeology, n.d.; Earthsky, 2017; Cram, 1993). With the utilisation of Radiocarbon Dating, scientists have been able to discover that Lindow

Radiometric dating is still being used today. Modern uranium-lead radioactive dating of meteorites and earth materials gives us today's estimate that the earth is about 4.5 billion years

Kangaroo Point Cliffs are one of the most iconic places that highlight Brisbane city’s history along with the Brisbane City Hall and Story Bridge. These cliffs were known by Aborigines even before European settlers arrived in Brisbane. The development around the Kangaroo Point Cliff was started in the 1900s when roads were developed around the cliff. Today, the Kangaroo Point Cliff offers many adventurous activities such as rock climbing, kayaking on the Brisbane River, Segway tours, bike riding around the garden etc. The rocks found on these steep cliffs are known as the ‘Brisbane Tuff’. These unique pink and green stones were also used in building public buildings during the 1820s and 1830s. The very steep feature and gas holes on the cliff plays a significant role in identifying these cliffs a result of a volcanic eruption (Visit Brisbane, 2018). This essay analyses geological formation of Kangaroo Point cliff and the Brisbane tuff which the

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The Narrabeen man body was discovered in North of Sydney, Octavia Street and Ocean street near a bus shelter. His body wasn’t well preserved because the sand was quite warm and also his body was under the sand for 4000 years.

timeline of modern humans, Homo sapiens, and how long they have been in existence. According to mainstream science, popular belief holds that the history of our species is confirmed to be confined to the past 12,000 years. This figure is a culmination based on what we know about evolution and what we have been able to gather through fossil analyzation and dating of artifacts as well as human remains. Although the subject of human antiquity, also referred to as human origins, does not prompt a great deal of debate there may actually be the need for some. A reexamination of the notion that humans have only existed a mere 12,000 years should be considered as there may be evidence to support a much greater antiquity of modern human life. Alternative researchers have offered up evidence of “forbidden archeology” that contradicts the mainstream beliefs of human origins, however these discoveries seem to have been swept under the scientific rug.

Before the discovery of radiometric methods to determine the age of the Earth, the first few attempts were off by thousands of millions

Despite the academic squabbling that caused some articles to read as petty personal disagreements, Mungo Man remained a present and prominent figure in these texts of public discussion. This is undoubtedly due to his continued personification by both Jim Bowler and journalists. While the articles were primarily concerned with numbers, dates and the radiocarbon methods that achieved them, they did not make the mistake of displacing the narrative’s characters from public view. This offers one explanation as to why earlier representations of Mungo Man were not as lasting, and why images of him in the 1990s and early twenty-first century continued to work their way into the public consciousness. While the dates of Mungo Man’s time depth are important, their meaning remains unsurprisingly untranslatable when it is not tethered to a personified image.

According to astronomical research and geological evidence, scientist indicate the universe is approximately thirteen thousand eight hundred and twenty billion years old. The first link to humanity started with a primate group called Ardipithecus. While our ancestors have been around for about six million years, the modern form of humans only evolved about two hundred thousand years ago. The age of the Earth is estimated about four point fifty four billion years because that is the age of the oldest rocks with fossil evidence of life on earth. The oldest rocks on Earth found to date are the Acasta Gneisses in northwestern Canada near the Great Slave Lake, which are four point three billion years old. The study of the origin of life on Earth, more specifically abiogenesis, is the natural process of life arising from non-living matter. Life on Earth is believed to have began from organic compounds about three point eight to four billion years ago. Despite several competing theories for how life arose on Earth scientist only know when life first appeared on Earth and are still far from answering how it appeared. Since it is hard to prove or disprove them, no fully accepted theories of the origin of life exists.

The first fossil was found in 1960 when a team led by scientists Louis and Mary Leakey uncovered the fossilized remains of a unique early human at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania.

The hominid also referred to as the upright man was discovered in various parts of the globe including Lake Turkana in Kenya, Spain, and Java in Indonesia among other places. They are estimated to have lived over 1.6 million years ago (Coolidge & Wynn, 2011).