The Mystery of Mungo Man and Mungo Lady - The skeletons that rewrote human history

The discovery of human remains at Lake Mungo in south-western New South Wales in 1968 and 1974 changed theories of human history forever. Find out why in this video.

Follow History Skills:

[ANRCHID]

You skipped the most interesting part! The DNA of the first skeletal remains (LM1) were analyzed and matched known aboriginal populations and dated to a few thousand years ago. DNA analysis of the second skeleton (LM3) found that the DNA did not match that of known aboriginals from Australia. Furthermore, the mtDNA was older than "Mitochondrial Eve" from whom all living humans share a maternal lineage. This suggests the remains could have belonged to an entirely separate branch of the human race. Besides being a bombshell discovery for the peopling of Australia, the DNA analysis calls into question the traditional model of a single Out of Africa migration and suggests multiple waves of migration into Australia. Another group of researchers asserted that the remains could have been contaminated (by what? a 40k year old vampire on the excavation crew?), but besides not making any sense, no evidence of contamination was found. The remains were then returned to be re-buried, making sure no one else will ever be able to examine them again with more advanced DNA analysis. But ONLY the LM3 skeleton was re-buried, not the aboriginal remains LM1. Really gets the noggin joggin.

[allisonshaw]

The term "mindless savages" is truly insulting because no species of hominid has ever been "mindless" - our earliest ancestors have showed that they thought, crafted, and created things to improve their survival and quality of life. As for "savages"... well, look at how people treat each other and we are all still savages and maybe even more so because we should certainly know better and therefore have no excuses for our inhumanity to one another.

[donaldmac]

theres much more to the mungo dig story but it has become a politically an culturally sensitive topic because it implys a number of racially different humans have occupied that region.

[Subutai]

Humans have existed for hundreds of thousands of years. Written history may tell you otherwise, but like science, we are making more and more progress understanding our past. Ancient people were very intelligent individuals and even created their own technology to build amazing things.

[MikeHunt-cp]

Years later, his progeny Mungo Jerry would record In The Summertime

[leighchristopherson]

Ochre is used until today as sunscreen, and some researchers are saying that it may not have been sprinkled on the bodies in graves, but that the individuals may have been wearing it.

[mrgeno]

Surviving there among all that mega fauna is mind blowing.

[bertsrig]

From what I remember of that discovery was they were found to be a different race to today’s indigenous Australians and that finding didn’t go down too well.

[keithgoodrick-meech]

The true history of mankind on earth is and will probably never be fully understood.

[paulcarter]

"found ... stone tools ... some dating as far back as the last ice-age". That's strange: that's only 11, 000 years ago, not 42, 000

[joshgill]

You forgot to mention they had totally different DNA to modern aboriginals and all research into the skeletons have stopped since that was discovered.

[kevinwaters]

I made a similar discovery at Waverley Cemetry. I only needed to dig six feet down. The samples seemed to live in rectangular wooden boxes.

[leeroberts]

Mungo man predated modern aboriginal people.

[johnsinger]

Why did you ignore the huge contribution of Alan Thorne who assembled the bones and arranged the carbon dating?

[doctorshoot]

They could have asked the central and southern people who would have explained it over a coffee
It seems that indigenous knowledge is always ignored unless a test tube can confirm something

[jonimaricruz]

I hate comments like “mindless cave dweller”, how ignorant and arrogant. These were the bones of Homo sapiens, same as us, they were just as intelligent and capable as any modern human being, their technology allowed them to survive and even thrive in their surrounding. Pointless and foolish to use such terms when describing them.

[theeddorian]

No human is a "mindless savage." Like other similar YT bits, the images are largely irrelevant, such as a an image of "archaeologists" from 1968 holding old, rusted tools (not archaeological either) and a smartphone (didn't exist in the twentieth century), and no sort of cell phone existed in the 1960s.

[weethree]

I can't BELIEVE that a documentary like this, posted 2 years ago, would use words like "mindless savages" and "mindless brutes" about humann ancestors living 42000 years ago! I find this outrageous.

[chrisk]

What evidence is there that the current native residents of the area have any connection at all with Mungo man? If the ancient residents had a culture based on harvesting fish and shellfish they would have probably moved on long before the lake finally dried up thousands of years ago.

[virginiamoss]

Why would anyone assume "mindless brute" about any skeletal remains of any animal. Most animals are not "brutes" and are certainly not "mindless".