On Australia ’s southerly slide scientists have establish a puzzle . Every explanation is so improbable it would be throw out , were it not that the alternatives were just as strange . Among these unlikely option is the astounding possibility humans reached Australia 55,000 age earlier than the oldest antecedently offer day of the month . If true , it would not only overturn our thinking about the occupation of one continent , but the whole of human migration beyond Africa .
Forty - five years agoProfessor James Bowlerof the University of Melbourne made a discovery that was to change Australian archaeology . At Lake Mungo , New South Wales , he encounter theoldest human remainsin Australia , proving man had been in Australia for 40,000 years . Since then tools 25,000 year old havebeen find .
Yet Bowler ’s new internet site hints at a human front 120,000 geezerhood ago . This is so contradictory to everything else we suppose we know about human migrations that Bowler admit there will be plenty of resistance . Moreover , as Bowler note to IFLScience , the web site lacks tools or human ivory . Yet Bowler and fellow worker can offer no natural account for what they have find .
For ten of thousands of years the Gunditjmara people camp down at Moyjil , near the rima oris of the Hopkins River , for the access to food and refreshed water . Beneath the oldest Gunditjmara remnants , blackened stones that appear to have got their color and fracture from repeat exposure to fire , are eat at from the drop face . Wildfire is a natural part of the Australian bush , but in six papers in a particular issue of theProceedings of the Royal Society of VictoriaBowler , Dr John Sherwoodof Deakin University and Monash University’sProfessor Ian McNivenargue the form of blackeningsuggests a campfirerather than a bushfire .
Moreover , the site also containsremains of eatable shellfish . The coastline hosts many similar shell kitchen midden . The dispersion of specie at Moyjil resemble those of human blood , and differs greatly from those left by birds . Thepapersconsider several raw explanation for both ardour and shells , but resolve grounds for these is inconclusive .
If the rock and casing - containing level was more late , no one would wonder its status as cross out a human campsite , but Bowler has date it to 120,000 - 125,000 years ago . archeological geological dating is often controversial , but Bowler is firm . “ We ’ve used several independent dating method that all give the same solvent , ” he tell IFLScience .
Bowler is under no illusions how strange it would be to get hold a human comportment so much aged than anything else on the continent . “ Who were they ? Why here and not elsewhere ? Why no bequest of any toolkit , no traces of food for thought lease alone human clay ? ” hewrotein one of the paper with Sherwood , Federation University’sDr Stephen CareyandDr David Priceof the University of Wollongong .
Bowler does n’t want to enter into discourse about which is less improbable , thatHomo Sapiensleft Africa so much earlier than we thought , or that another metal money of human , such asHomo Erectus , somehow reached Australia . Two years ago the opening of other human metal money reaching America130,000 year agoshook palaeontologist but the grounds couldbe explainedin other elbow room . “ I ’m a geologist , ” he told IFLScience . “ I do n’t insert into such wondering region , I have no melodic theme who these people were . ”
Nor does Bowler expect archaeologists to take any human presence without signs of tools or human bone . He acknowledge that , when late find have tug back the time of Australia ’s former occupation , they have done so incrementally , and “ there has been continuity ” . Moyjil is quite unlike . However , he added , sites of exchangeable age have been disregard , since the possible action of humans in Australia prior to 70,000 yr ago was unthinkable . Now perhaps , people will check , just in example .
This video reveal the context and beauty of the Moyjil site , but was made before the latest enquiry revealing just how sometime the potential human occupation really is .
[ H / T : The Guardian ]
