Mungo Lady Sparknotes

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Mungo Man and Mungo Lady – TEEL Paragraph: How has evidence provided modern day historians with evidence that Indigenous Australians have lived in Australia for tens of thousands of years? Disinterred from the Lake Mungo Landscape, approximately 760 kilometres west of New South Wales, were the very skeletal remains helping to indicate the fact that the Indigenous peoples of Australia were indeed around tens of thousands of years ago. There were two corpses: one a man, and the other, a young woman. They were nicknamed ‘Mungo Man’ and ‘Mungo Lady’. This astounding discovery was made by geologist Jim Bowler and two archaeologists John Mulvaney and Rhys Jones. The process of Radiocarbon Dating (allowing them to pinpoint just about how many years …show more content…

The traditional owners of the Willandra Lakes Regions are known to be the Barkandji/Paakantyi, Mutthi and Ngiyampaa people. They have been thought to have inhabited this very area of land for at least 50,000 years. Leading a more traditional way of life, the First Nations people gathered freshwater mussels, marsupials and mammals, yabbies and bush tucker for food. Sharing a close connection to the land, Lake Mungo is a very sacred site to the Aboriginal people. In death, the manner in which Mungo Man and Mungo Lady were buried is very significant. Mungo Lady was the very first evidence of cremation and ritual/ceremonial burial. A hefty process was undertaken, as she was cremated, her bones were crushed, her body was burnt, and only then, was she finally buried. When Mungo Man’s body was unearthed, a striking observation was made. There was red ochre sprinkled onto Mungo Man’s body. This insinuates that he was a very important and well-respected man, held in high regard – possibly an elder. As of now, Lake Mungo is considered to be a vast, dry lakebed. This certainly was not the case a mere 50,000 years ago, when the lake used to be full of

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