Five decades after significantly expanding understanding of the tens of thousands of years modern humans have inhabited Australia with his discovery of the ancient ‘Mungo Man’, Jim Bowler has returned to the dry lake that staged the momentous encounter.
That day – February 26, 1974 – would change the scientific understanding of human antiquity and prove what Australia’s indigenous people have always known: they have been here pretty much forever or, in the case of Mungo Man and Mungo Lady – too found by Bowler in 1968 – 42,000 years and counting.
Bowler, 94, felt it was “vital” to be in the Willandra Lakes region last Monday, 50 years later, with family and representatives of three recognized traditional owners – the Barkandji/Paackantji, Mutthi Mutthi and Ngiyampaa. He wanted to be there among them, especially some of the elders, to reflect on all that Mungo Man taught and what he might now inspire for the future of Australian racial reconciliation.
Bowler was a young, adventurous man when he came across the bones of Mungo Lady and later Mungo Man. Operating alone, the father-of-six wandered the Willandra Lakes for weeks exploring rock formations, all the while coming across ancient signs of human life around what had once been a vast inland sea.
Bowler’s main professional interest was the geological evidence of climate change and “the story of the Ice Age”. But he was aware – especially after finding Mungo Lady’s bones – that there was ‘much more to come’ about human antiquity on the Australian continent. His discoveries would arguably add as much or more to the sum of knowledge of evolutionary biology as climate change and the ice age.
Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that he so vividly remembered the sunny, cool late summer morning that he came across the complete skeleton of Mungo Man, who, like the fragmented remains of Mungo Lady, was subjected to sophisticated burial rites involving ocher and fire.
Related: ‘We’re talking 2,000 generations’: Mungo Man and Mungo Lady’s reburial divides traditional owners
“When the rain stopped there was an opportunity to explore, because rain invariably revealed the new [archaeological material],” he says. “I was always very aware of the importance of… Mungo Lady. [But] her remains were highly fragmented – they had been burned and already exposed – so there was no actual understanding of the environment [at time of burial] … but I always had in the back of my mind that there was more evidence from people and so you keep looking.”
‘There were so many rich signs of human habitation… fish remains, stone tools, mud puddles – it was a geologist’s gold mine. When I noticed the piece of white bone my first thought was that it was a wombat… but I went over and took a look and it was completely different and I brushed away some of the sand revealing a bit of the lower jaw, the teeth and the jaw. So this was clearly someone human.
“I had no idea at the time whether the skull meant the full body was there, but it was enough to raise the possibility that we had evidence of another ancient human here deep in the dune.”
Throughout the 19th and well into the 20th century, physical anthropologists and anatomists had attempted, through the widespread theft and collection of human skulls, to prove that Australian Aborigines represented a step in the evolutionary chain between ape and modern humans. Although this theory has already been debunked, some researchers were still looking for signs of Neanderthal and Homo erectus in the remains of Aboriginal people stolen from traditional burial grounds – although none as old as Mungo Man and Lady, inhabitants of the last Ice Age.
“I realized this was the beginning of a new day [of knowledge],” says Bowler.
Within 48 hours, his staff from the Australian National University – mainly Bowler’s mentor John Mulvaney – known as the father of Australian archeology – had arrived to excavate the bones.
“So we were just sweeping away the sand cover and very quickly, deep in the core of the ancient dune, we saw this remarkable testimony to human antiquity unfold before our eyes.”
Bowler admits today that the events were “exciting” and created “a sense of elation” among the academics, of whom he is the last living. But in retrospect, he suggests that such elation and academic pride can be “dangerous” when it comes to removing ancestral remains, regardless of the scientific knowledge they may advance or debunk myths.
The removal – or as some Indigenous people say, theft – of the bones was not widely controversial at the time and came after a long Australian tradition of cultural theft of ancestral remains, not least by Murray Black, who provided hundreds of skeletons. and skulls at the Australian Institute of Anatomy. As a much younger man in Gippsland, Bowler Black knew and was shocked by it.
When asked if it felt “heretic or disrespectful” to remove the Mungo remains, Bowler says, “not at the time.”
“Unfortunately at that stage there was no known presence of indigenous people [as local custodians] – no one with whom we could consult, let alone share the meaning of that occasion, or [from whom to] request removal [of the remains],” he says.
“Science was engaged in a shameful treatment of indigenous remains. That sense of disrespect hadn’t sunk in yet… There was no… a conscious reflection of shame at the time. But it is now seen as a gross misrepresentation of what we should have done… We would treat those remains very differently today.”
Contact with traditional owners – led in part by the late Mutthi Mutthi elder Alice Kelly – did not take place for years, by which time Mungo Man and Lady had been secured from the ANU.
Related: Mungo Man: the last journey of our 40,000 year old ancestor
Despite the exhaustion of scientific testing on the remains and Mungo National Park being declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in part because of its unique global human connection, there was deep-seated institutional opposition to Mungo Man’s return to the country. Together with the traditional owners, Bowler and Mulvaney attempted to take the remains home and bury them respectfully. Mungo Man was returned to the country in 2017 after Mungo Lady was returned in 1992. Both were kept in a secure facility associated with Mungo National Park.
To the dismay of some traditional custodians, the bodies were secretly reburied in 2022. The reburial was proposed by the Aboriginal Advisory Group, made up of members from the three traditional ownership groups that advise the New South Wales bureaucracy on traditional land management in the Willandra Lakes region. . Some individual members of the advisory group opposed the reburial.
The reburial caused division among local Aboriginal communities. Some wanted a more monumental funeral, others a memorial. Jason Kelly, Alice Kelly’s grandson, remains angry about the secret reburial he tried to stop.
“It goes against the wishes of my grandmother, who didn’t want them secretly put in the ground – but [into] a safe and respectful place.”
Kelly and his father, Danny Kelly (Alice’s only living child), and his uncle, Ngiyampaa elder Roy Kennedy, now in his 90s, were among the traditional owners who joined Bowler and his family this week on the shores of Lake Mungo added.
Bowler and several elders had hoped to visit the reburial site. But the advisory group rejected the proposal.
“It was critical that they could be there with Jim,” Kelly says. “It was great to be there, but it was disappointing that the elders couldn’t go to the actual meeting [secret] reburial site. And it was disappointing to my father and Uncle Roy that the entire country didn’t realize that this was the 50th anniversary and what Mungo Man means to the country and the world.
While Bowler said he felt the need to be close to the spot where he discovered Mungo Man, the day was also tinged with disappointment that he could not go to the reburial site and that these oldest discovered Indigenous Australians had been buried without ceremony.
“They didn’t deserve to be buried in secret and without honor,” Bowler said. “Unlike the ritual ceremony that took place there 40,000 years ago, the secret reburial remains a sad moment. Although it’s not something we want to focus on. Time has passed. Some mistakes were made – we all made mistakes. We now have to move on to the next step.”
That step, he says, should be a years-long dialogue of reconciliation “to find that healing glue” in the aftermath of the defeat of the constitutional recognition referendum last October.
“There is a need for healing – the need for dialogue between different cultures has not yet been resolved. Now that the referendum has failed, there is an urgent need to find the healing glue. What is it that can unite the nation now? I suggest that this exemplifies the Mungo people and their deep connection to the land and the spiritual dimension it encompasses, as the human beings most intimately connected to the cosmos.”
Kelly agrees.
“His proposal for a dialogue around Mungo is perfect. My grandmother always promoted it as a place of healing. And as a place of education for all Australians… We have never come close to realizing Mungo’s potential as a place of global cultural, spiritual and human importance.”
Bowler, at age 94, may yet return to Lake Mungo. But regardless, the conversation that his discovery started fifty years ago – despite all the resulting human significance and fear – promises to continue.