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Colin Groves and Alan Thorne have been fighting for years about a man who died roughly 60,000 years ago. They are arguing about the DNA of this man, known as Mungo Man.

An intellectual tussle

Colin Groves and Alan Thorne have been fighting for years...in the nicest possible way. They argue for the media, but are always very civil. They appear to enjoy one another's company, and they even share a common intellectual home at the Australian National University in Canberra. Still, each is absolutely convinced the other is completely and utterly wrong.

The pair are currently engaged in intense metaphysical fisticuffs about a man who died roughly 60,000 years ago, by the shores of once-verdant Lake Mungo in south-eastern NSW. More specifically, they are arguing about the DNA of this man, known as Mungo Man.

In a technical tour de force, a team led by Thorne has extracted and analysed parts of a single gene from Mungo Man. More stunning still, the researchers claim that what they discovered is that the man's DNA is unlike anything they have ever seen. While Mungo Man was undoubtedly fully modern anatomically, he came from a genetic lineage that is now extinct.

Thorne claims that the findings support his theoretical point of view and discredit Groves' position entirely. Nonsense, says Groves. And because the finding is so unexpected, scientists around the world have joined the fray.

So what's all the fuss about?

Why is everyone hot under the collar about Mungo Man? Moreover, aren't scientists supposed to be dispassionate thinkers? The answers to these questions may well be, respectively: an astounding piece of research, a leading idea under threat, and not on your Nelly!

First of all, the Mungo Man frenzy demonstrates that heated and long-running disputes are nothing unusual in science, although they are usually conducted with less public fanfare. In fact, debates can become very heated indeed, especially so when the opponents are arguing about genuinely profound issues, and over matters where data is thin on the ground.

That's the case here. The immediate point of debate may be Mungo Man, but anthropologists Groves and Thorne - and the two warring camps they represent - are really at loggerheads over nothing less than the origin of humanity itself:- where we came from, when, and the events that transpired on the evolutionary journey from "ape man" to human.

Our journey's beginning is less contentious than the end

The current kafuffle over Mungo Man's unique gene highlights the surprising fact that the beginning of that journey is less contentious than the end. In fact, there is little argument about the trip until the last stop before the end, that is, the stop before modern people like us stepped onto the platform of life.

Over the last four decades, excavations in Europe, Asia, and Africa have turned up enough fossil evidence for scientific experts to agree that our earliest ancestors enjoyed life in the trees of Africa some 10 million years ago. Eventually, those ancient apes climbed down to the Savannahs. There, as semi-bipedal creatures called hominids, they feasted on the abundant fruits, nuts, berries, and the occasional bit of flesh or bone marrow, scavenged from more powerful predators.

All went along well for several million years. Then came the inevitable family split. Last December French and Kenyan researchers announced that they had discovered, in Africa's aptly named Rift Valley, the remains of a six-million-year-old creature they named "Millennium Ancestor". Careful examination of its bones suggests that Millennium Ancestor walked upright.

Unless - or until - new evidence turns up, then, it seems that six million years ago, humans and chimps parted company from their common ancestor. Each started down its own evolutionary path. That's about 1.5 million years earlier than previous finds suggested.

Following the hominid path, one thing led to another. New species emerged and were ever more human-like: Ardipithecus ramidus turned up about 4.5 million years ago, then the Australopithecines like "Lucy" who lived 3 million years ago, followed by some robust hominids called Paranathropus - who may or may not be relatives - and finally, perhaps 2 million years ago, Homo erectus hit Africa big time.

Homo erectus is a member of the human group Homo. Evidence suggests these early folks were upright tool makers who were probably fond of sing songs around the camp fire and a bit of gossip. The group was such a success, that between 1.5 and 2 million years ago, families began moving out of Africa, eventually settling in Europe and Asia.

It is at this point in the human journey that Groves and Thorne part company. They interpret what happened next very differently indeed.

Out of Africa?

Colin Groves is a proponent of the widely accepted theory that all modern humans are descended from a group of fully modern people who evolved from Homo erectus in Africa, around 100,00 to 150,000 years ago. These people then left their African homeland and replaced - one way or another - the earlier Homo erectus settlers. Hence, the out-of-Africa model.

... or Romeo & Juliet?

The other, less popular, position is held by anthropologist Alan Thorne. He claims Groves and company have totally overlooked "human nature", or, more appropriately "pre-human nature".

According to Thorne, it's reasonable to assume that those dispersed groups of Homo erectus engaged in Romeo and Juliet style hanky-panky now and again, much as people do today. This inter-breeding between groups kept genes flowing across Europe and Asia, enabling every body to stay on the same evolutionary path. In other words, Thorne argues that those archaic people weren't replaced by modern people like us, rather they became us.

Enter Mungo Man & his DNA

So what have Mungo Man and his clan got to do with this scientific dust up? Well, the beginning of the answer goes back to 1995. That is when a young ANU graduate student, Greg Adcock, began his doctoral project. Under the supervision of Thorne and molecular biologists Jim Peacock and Liz Dennis at CSIRO Plant Industry - and with the approval of local Aboriginal people - Adcock began the meticulous process of retrieving DNA from bits of bone that had chipped off Mungo Man's remains over the millennia.

It was an audacious project in the extreme. Because when Adcock began work, the oldest human DNA ever extracted was only about 5,000 years old. Moreover, Adcock went further. He wanted to compare Mungo Man's DNA with that of nine other ancient Aborigines who died between 8,000 and 15,000 years ago. Astoundingly, Adcock extracted and sequenced useful DNA from all of these long-gone people.

But what did it mean? Well, ANU evolutionary geneticist Simon Easteal set about analysing the DNA from Mungo Man and comparing it with sequences of the same gene from the other early Australians, not to mention 45 living Aboriginal people, 3,453 people from around the world, two European Neanderthals, and finally chimps and bonobos, or pygmy chimps.

Easteal produced a likely "evolutionary tree" for the gene, which is only passed on by women. It went like this: first to branch off were the chimps and bonobos; next the Neanderthals, then Mungo Man's clan, and after that, the common ancestor of all people alive today.

Exit Mungo Man...

In other words, Mungo Man's gene is extinct. According to the out-of-Africa model he should have had a gene like everybody else. But there he was, a physically modern man living in Australia 60,000 years ago with a defunct gene that probably appeared well before the most recent common ancestor of all of us.

In January this year, the world got its first look at the team's provocative findings, published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and reported in The Australian newspaper. The result was international pandemonium.

Because Adcock is working overseas, Thorne got the brunt of media inquiries. In less than a week, he did nearly 200 interviews with reporters from Australia and abroad. Scientists from around the world requested reprints of the Proceedings paper. Experts knocked on Jim Peacock's door, seeking the key to his laboratory's unprecedented ability to recover fossil DNA.

The scientific community was in a tizz. Critics complained that the findings had not been replicated in another laboratory. Others praised the laboratory work, but blasted Thorne's claim that the findings were the death knell for out-of-Africa. Hits to evolution web sites soared, and online chat rooms are still a-buzz.

Meanwhile, the public was astounded. Over cocktails and coffee, people chatted about the fate of the man from down under and his family. Had they been wiped out in a prehistoric case of ethnic cleansing? For some reason were the womenfolk unable to bear daughters to carry on the gene? Did they have no children at all? Or maybe, women from other clans with a more adaptive version of the gene, simply out-bred Mungo Man's line?

The totally befuddled remain convinced, incorrectly, that scientists had proven that modern people evolved from Aborigines. And some fundamentalist religious groups dismiss the whole debate about human origins as ungodly in the extreme.

But public confusion and scientific arguments aside, the fact is that a dazzling new piece of evidence about our origins was discovered in the bones of a man who died long, long ago in Australia. Right now, whose theory is right and whose is wrong is a matter of conjecture. Proof will only come when different ancient genes are recovered, ones that both parents pass on to their children.

Still, Groves and Thorne agree on one thing. The human journey is more complicated than either of them ever imagined.

Tags: science-and-technology, evolution

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Colin Groves and Alan Thorne have been fighting for years about a man who died roughly 60,000 years ago. They are arguing about the DNA of this man, known as Mungo Man. Colin Groves and Alan Thorne have been fighting for years...in the nicest possible way.

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Mungo Man: What to do next with Australia's oldest human remains | Australian Story (2018)

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aboriginal peoples; moieties; archaeological sites; evolution; migration; burial sites;

kow swamp (vic); mungo (nsw); mungo man; mungo woman

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One of the most valuable messages of Out of Darkness is that the Australian landscape is in fact an Indigenous artefact. (Video excerpt 1.53 minutesalso has educational notes. This clip chosen to be PG)

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New research supports the theory that the ancestors of modern humans came from many different regions of the world, not just a single area -- but critics remain far from convinced.

The study, published in the current issue of Science by University of Michigan anthropologist Milford H. Wolpoff and colleagues, is the second study in a week to fuel the debate on the origin of the human species.

Australian researchers set off a storm last week when they announced that their analysis of mitochondrial DNA from 'Mungo Man' also supported the so-called 'regional continuity theory'. Their study is due to be published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study presented in this week's Science comes to the same conclusion following a comparison of early modern and archaic fossil skulls from around the world.

"Ancient humans shared genes and behaviours across wide regions of the world, and were not rendered extinct by one 'lucky group' that later evolved into us," says Wolpoff. "The fossils clearly show that more than one ancient group survived and thrived."

The researchers analysed the similarities and differences between fossil skulls from Australia and Central Europe, and peripheral regions far from Africa, where according to the dominant "Out of Africa" theory -- also known as the "Eve" or "Replacement" theory -- modern humans evolved.

"Basically we wanted to see if this comparison could disprove the theory of multiple ancestry for the early European and Australian moderns," said Wolpoff.

The researchers said they found that the most recent European and Australian skulls shared characteristics with the ancient African and Near Eastern population and with the older fossils from within their own regions. They also found there were many more similarities than could be explained by chance alone -- a finding which amounted to "a smoking gun" for the regional continuity theory.

The findings are the latest evidence in the continuing scientific controversy about the origin of modern humans ( Homo sapiens). Most scientists believe that all living humans can trace their ancestry exclusively to a small group of ancient humans, probably Africans, living around 100,000 years ago. If this theory was true it would mean that all other early human groups, whose fossils date from this time back to almost two million years ago, must have become extinct, possibly wiped out in a prehistoric genetic holocaust.

Other scientists, including Wolpoff and Australian National University anthropologist Dr Alan Thorne, maintain that there is little evidence that a small group originating in a single geographic region replaced the entire population of early humans.

"In asking the question a different way, and directly addressing the fossils, this study provides compelling evidence that replacement is the wrong explanation," says Wolpoff. "Instead, the findings support the theory of multi-regional evolution. Modern humans are the present manifestation of an older worldwide species with populations connected by gene flow and the exchange of ideas."

Palaeoanthropologist Associate Professor Peter Brown of the University of New England disputes the findings.

"I'm amazed that Science has published this article. If it had been submitted to me by a third year student I would have failed them," he told ABC Science Online.

Professor Brown said that Wolpoff and colleagues had chosen an Australian fossil that was unrepresentative of the skulls of that time.

"It's pathologically different. It has a skull as thick as a bike helmet," he said. "They've just chosen a fossil that suits their theory".

He said that the authors had also ignored literature that was contrary to their theory.

Dr Alan Thorne, however, insists that the evidence is on his and Wolpoff's side.

"What we've found is mitochondrial DNA in an Australian fossil that is much more primitive than anything that's been found in Africa," he said. "And there is no archaeological or physical evidence to support the idea that Aboriginal Australians originated from Africa."

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New research supports the theory that the ancestors of modern humans came from many different regions of the world, not just a single area -- but critics remain far from convinced. The study, published in the current issue of Science by University of Michigan anthropologist Milford H.

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Controversy has flared again over the age of Mungo Man, Australia's oldest human remains, after claims from a Melbourne University-led study that he is 22,000 years younger than previously thought.

But although the study claims broad agreement on Mungo Man's age, a leading expert on archaeology has dismissed the findings as inconclusive.

The study, published today in the science journal Nature, is a stunning rebuke to a 1999 Australian National University study that put Mungo Man's age at 62,000 years.

The Nature article was co-written by Melbourne University geologist Jim Bowler, who discovered Mungo Man at Lake Mungo in western New South Wales in 1969. Professor Bowler said that, unlike the ANU study findings, Mungo Man's new age of about 40,000 years was a "consensus" view. Four universities and the CSIRO used multiple methods and four separate dating laboratories.

"The new age corrects previous estimates and provides a new picture of homo sapiens adapting to deteriorating climate in Australia," Professor Bowler said.

"Australia's colonisation is one of the keys to our understanding of how homo sapiens evolved and spread around the world. It is critical we get the story correct."

The research also claims Mungo Lady, discovered in 1974 by Professor Bowler, is 10,000 years older than first thought. This puts her at the same age as Mungo Man. Professor Bowler said they might even have known each other. Mungo Man is also the world's earliest known ritual burial - his corpse was anointed with ochre - while Mungo Lady is the world's earliest known cremation.

The study arrived at its figure by geographical dating of the Lake Mungo site. The ANU team of 1999 dated Mungo Man's skeleton. There is evidence of human occupation of Australia 50,000 years ago in Western Australia and the Northern Territory, but no skeletal remains.

The ANU team could not be contacted yesterday, but its findings were defended by a reader in archaeology at Sydney University, Dr Peter White. "If (Professor Bowler) is right, we have got a 60,000 year-old skeleton in a 40,000-year-old grave," he said.

"There's now a clash between the dating of the burial and the dating of the skeleton ... why are the dating techniques giving such different ages?" Until scientists resolved this, no side had sole claim on Mungo Man's age.

The new finding sheds new light on the fierce debate over human evolution. Fossils of the human ancestor Homo erectus have been found in most of the world. ANU researcher Dr Alan Thorne, who dated Mungo Man in 1999, argues that Homo erectus evolved into homo sapiens all over the world.

The "out of Africa" school argues that Homo erectus evolved into modern humans only in Africa, and then spread over the world, including Australia. If Mungo Man is 60,000 years old, as Dr Thorne argues, that leaves his forebears too little time to migrate from Africa, via India and Asia, to Australia.

"You might well argue that by bringing the age of Mungo Man forward by 20,000 years, it favours the out-of-Africa view," Professor Bowler said.

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Controversy has flared again over the age of Mungo Man, Australia's oldest human remains, after claims from a Melbourne University-led study that he is 22,000 years younger than previously thought. But although the study claims broad agreement on Mungo Man's age, a leading expert on archaeology has dismissed the findings as inconclusive.

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For tens of thousands of years, the area around Uluru and Kata Tjuta provided Anangu with everything needed for survival, including many bush foods and traditional tools.

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Food and Medicine - Land and Spirit - Culture Victoria

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Wominjeka profiles Victorian Koorie culture and Koorie organisations across Victoria. This excerpt t…

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CULTURAL SENSITIVITY MESSAGE - Please read

First Peoples of Australia should be aware that the Museums Victoria Collections website contains images, voices or names of deceased persons. For some First Peoples communities, seeing images or hearing recordings of persons who have passed, may cause sadness or distress and, in some cases, offense.

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Whilst every effort is made to ensure the most accurate information is presented, some content may contain errors. The level of documentation for collection items can and does vary, dependent on when or how the item was collected. We encourage and welcome contact from First Peoples Communities, scholars and others to provide advice to correct and enhance information.

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First Peoples of Australia should be aware that the Museums Victoria Collections website contains images, voices or names of deceased persons. For some First Peoples communities, seeing images or hearing recordings of persons who have passed, may cause sadness or distress and, in some cases, offense.

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Geographical change and Indigenous memory

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Geographical change and Indigenous memory

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Celebrate NAIDOC week at Museums Victoria Store

To celebrate NAIDOC (National Aboriginal and Islander Day Observance Committee) week Museums Victoria Store has curated a shopping experience that share and celebrate the living cultures, histories, and knowledge of First Peoples. Many items from this experience support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses, individuals and are Australian-made products. Our curated collection promotes the vibrancy and diversity of Australia's First Peoples - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

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To celebrate NAIDOC (National Aboriginal and Islander Day Observance Committee) week Museums Victoria Store has curated a shopping experience that share and celebrate the living cultures, histories, and knowledge of First Peoples. Many items from this experience support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses, individuals and are Australian-made products.

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Extinction of Australia's Megafauna - Behind the News

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Aboriginal DNA provides human migration clues

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Megafauna cave painting could be 40, 000 years old

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Megafauna cave painting could be 40, 000 years old

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Scientists say an Aboriginal rock art depiction of an extinct giant bird could be Australia's oldest painting.

The red ochre painting, which depicts two emu-like birds with their necks outstretched, could date back to the earliest days of settlement on the continent.

It was rediscovered at the centre of the Arnhem Land plateau about two years ago, but archaeologists first visited the site a fortnight ago.

A palaeontologist has confirmed the animals depicted are the megafauna species Genyornis.

Archaeologist Ben Gunn said the giant birds became extinct more than 40,000 years ago.

"The details on this painting indicate that it was done by someone who knew that animal very well," he said.

He says the detail could not have been passed down through oral storytelling.

"If it is a Genyornis, and it certainly does have all the features of one, it would be the oldest dated visual painting that we've got in Australia," he said.

"Either the painting is 40,000 years old, which is when science thinks Genyornis disappeared, or alternatively the Genyornis lived a lot longer than science has been able to establish."

Mr Gunn says there are paintings of other extinct animals right across the area including the thylacine, or tasmanian tiger, the giant echidna and giant kangaroo.

"It does give you a window back to a time that you can pinpoint, and in the case of the Genyornis it's a very long picture," he said.

The traditional owners of the land in the Northern Territory say they are excited the painting could be Australia's oldest dated rock art.

The Jawoyn Association's Wes Miller says the painting is one of thousands rediscovered across Arnhem Land in recent years.

"It verifies that the Jawoyn people were living in this country for a very, very long time," he said.

"People say it, but once again this is clearly a demonstration of how long Jawoyn people have been in this country and other Indigenous groups. It's great from that point of view. It's pretty exciting stuff."

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Megafauna cave painting could be 40,000 years old

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Scientists say an Aboriginal rock art depiction of an extinct giant bird could be Australia's oldest painting. The red ochre painting, which depicts two emu-like birds with their necks outstretched, could date back to the earliest days of settlement on the continent.

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Indigenous stories of dramatic sea level rises across Australia date back more than 7,000 years in a continuous oral tradition without parallel anywhere in the world, according to new research.

Sunshine Coast University marine geographer Patrick Nunn and University of New England linguist Nicholas Reid believe that 21 Indigenous stories from across the continent faithfully record events between 18,000 and 7000 years ago, when the sea rose 120m.

Reid said a key feature of Indigenous storytelling culture - a distinctive "cross-generational cross-checking" process - might explain the remarkable consistency in accounts passed down by preliterate people which researchers previously believed could not persist for more than 800 years.

"The idea that 300 generations could faithfully tell a story that didn't degenerate into Chinese whispers, that was passing on factual information that we know happened from independent chronology, that just seems too good to be true, right?" Reid told Guardian Australia.

"It's an extraordinary thing. We don't find this in other places around the world. The sea being 120 metres lower and then coming up over the continental shelf, that happened in Africa, America, Asia and everywhere else. But it's only in Australia that we're finding this large canon of stories that are all faithfully telling the same thing."

Scholars of oral traditions have previously been sceptical of how accurately they reflect real events.

However, Nunn and Reid's paper, "Aboriginal memories of inundation of the Australian coast dating from more than 7000 years ago", published in Australian Geographer, argues the stories provide empirical corroboration of a postglacial sea level rise documented by marine geographers.

Some of the stories are straight factual accounts, such as those around Port Phillip Bay near Melbourne, which tell of the loss of kangaroo hunting grounds.

Others, especially older stories such as those from around Spencer Gulf in South Australia, are allegorical: an ancestral being angered by the misbehaviour of a clan punishes them by taking their country, gouging a groove with a magical kangaroo bone for the sea to swallow up the land.

"Our sense originally is that the sea level must have been creeping up very slowly and not been noticeable in an individual's lifetime," Reid said.

Kepten Wadity at Peppimenarti in the Northern Territory. Wadity discussed sea level stories with University of New England linguist Nick Reid. Photograph: University of New England

"But we've come to realise through conducting this research that Australia must in fact have been abuzz with news about this.

"There must have been constant inland movement, reestablishing relationships with country, negotiating with inland neighbours about encroaching onto their territory," Reid said. "There would have been massive ramifications of this."

The fortunes of those faced with the decision to retreat as camps, tracks and dreaming places were slowly swallowed up - especially on islands - were mixed.

Those on Rottnest and Kangaroo Islands cut and run up to 7000 years ago. Others, such as those at Flinders Island in Bass Strait, made the fateful decision to stay, and died out as the land grew arid and fresh water became scarce.

Reid said while it was impossible to prove that Indigenous oral traditions had continued unbroken over time, its contemporary features gave a clue as to why it may be the world's most faithful and durable.

"Say I'm a man from central Australia, my father teaches me stories about my country," Reid said.

"My sister's children, my nephews and nieces, are explicitly tasked with the kin-based responsibility for ensuring I know those stories properly. They take those responsibilities seriously. At any given point in time my father is telling the stories to me and his grandkids are checking. Three generations are hearing the story at once ... that's a kind of scaffolding that can keep stories true.

"When you have three generations constantly in the know, and tasked with checking as a cultural responsibility, that creates the kind of mechanism that could explain why [Indigenous Australians] seem to have done something that hasn't been achieved elsewhere in the world: telling stories for 10,000 years."

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Revealed: how Indigenous Australian storytelling accurately records sea level rises 7,000 years ago

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Distinctive 'cross-checking' tradition helps explain extraordinary accuracy in 21 stories about dramatic sea level rises between 7,000 and 18,000 years ago