Forty years on from the discovery of Mungo Man, what he represents is as pertinent now as ever

26 February 1974 was a historic day, one destined to change my life and affect the lives of many others. It was the day I encountered the eroding remains of Mungo Man on the shores of a distant and then unnamed lake basin in western New South Wales.

Five years earlier, on those same dry lake shores, I had happened upon the cremated remains of a young woman, now known as Mungo Lady. Her discovery established that fully modern humans had been in Australia for longer than any European expected. But just as significant were the complex ceremonial features of the burial of Mungo Man, which presented one of the dramatic mysteries of ancient human cultural development. His emergence 40 years ago was a special moment, the opening of an entirely new page in Australian history. The circumstances of that encounter help clarify understanding of who we are; they establish an ancient link with this land and our shared past.

In the summer of 1974, in geological pursuit of ice age climatic change, I was using dry lake basins as rain gauge records of past wet-dry climatic oscillations. Heavy rain had interrupted my excursions into what was an eroding wonderland, the large high-rimmed dune or lunette lining the eastern shores of the yet-to-be-named Lake Mungo. I was temporarily “confined to barracks” at Mungo station, the homestead and shearers’ quarters of the late Albert and Venda Barnes.

Local station owners Venda and Albert Barnes view the results of excavation with archaeologist Dr Alan Thorne, right. Photograph: Jim Bowler

Eventually the rain stopped, the mud dried and the landscape brightened. Eager to explore surfaces refreshed by cleansing rains I hastened to the site of the earlier Mungo Lady discovery, the Joulni or southern sector of the big lunette, an area rich in items of archaeological and geological interest. While I was following a distinctive soil horizon, one that had already yielded many artefacts, the late afternoon sun highlighted a tiny patch of something white shining through a cover of expansive sand mantle.

An immediate examination revealed what was obviously the domal part of a human skull. I brushed away sand to reveal that the jawbone was intact. This was part of an emerging body. Suddenly, and only 400 metres from the site of Mungo Lady, the number of human grave sites on the dunes was doubled.

A hasty phone call from the nearest station homestead to colleagues at the Australian National University stimulated an immediate reaction. Two days later, Dr Alan Thorne, recently appointed as physical anthropologist to the department of archaeology and an expert on ancient Australian human history, arrived with a team to carry out the excavation. Clearance of cover sands soon revealed a complete skeleton. Lying in an outstretched position, hands extended over his groin, the man’s 170-centimetre-tall body had been inserted into a carefully prepared grave 80 to 100 centimetres deep in lakeshore sands on the downwind (south-eastern) side of the dune.

The body was emerging by erosion from original dune sediments, dated to more than 20,000 years. That burial cover assured us the grave was older than 20,000 years and knocking on the door of Australia’s earliest occupation age. With each delicate removal of sand, a new chapter of Australian history was unfolding before us.

The excavating team in the process of revealing the Mungo Man skeleton. Photograph: Jim Bowler

But then came a surprise: we were aware of a strange brownish-red zone around the upper part of the body. I was asked to identify a small pellet. It was a type of limonite, an iron oxide. Then the penny dropped. This was not just limonite but ochre, the result of haematite grinding, painted on the body or sprinkled on the grave.

Identified by Thorne as the remains of an adult male, this man had been buried with a level of ritual significance never before imagined, let alone encountered in any record of Australia’s ancient occupancy. This was of international significance.

The remains were removed and returned in Thorne’s care to the ANU, where they were carefully preserved for further detailed examination. The discovery was announced to the scientific world along with a dramatic full-grave image. Mungo Man – eventually firmly dated to 41,000 years – became famous almost overnight.

The results of his emergence and removal to Canberra were complex. Archaeological sciences celebrated these new contributions to Australia’s antiquity with special emphasis on their cultural significance, the ochre ritual. Physical anthropologists confirmed the earliest Australians were fully modern people.

Reactions from Aboriginal people were mixed. These were times of often passionate debate about land rights. Gough Whitlam’s preliminary Land Rights Act still awaited legislative endorsement. Major problems remained in areas of cultural ownership: who owned Australian history?

Indigenous people, angered by the removal of human remains without their knowledge, protested. In these remote inland areas, away from river-based communities, Aboriginal presence was virtually invisible. But the Aboriginal response was loud and clear. “This is our culture; you are disturbing the spirits of our people. Stick to your own European history.”

The 1976 Aboriginal Land Rights Act, passed under the new prime minister, Malcolm Fraser, set new and overdue ground rules for the collection and management of cultural materials. Such work could not continue without approval of, and preferably collaborative engagement with, traditional owners. This new level of Aboriginal control was seen by many as an unwelcome barrier to research agendas.

An uneasy standoff ensued between scientists and Indigenous occupants. Archaeology at Mungo came to a halt. A mutual accord was finally reached in 1989 whereby scientists and local Indigenous people agreed to mutual sharing of research agendas, ensuring priority employment for local Aboriginal people wherever possible. This was cemented by Thorne’s 1991 return of the Mungo Lady remains to traditional owners. Meanwhile the remains of Mungo Man lay in the laboratories of the ANU.

Mungo Man has given us a rich insight into a dynamic and ancient world. He has delivered an exciting range of scientific firsts, played a significant role in the establishment of the Willandra Lakes as a world heritage area, and, for many Indigenous people, his status has given a sense of pride to the very notion of being Aboriginal. As one of the two foundational burials, with Mungo Lady, he exemplifies Aboriginal Australia’s proudest traditions of antiquity and cultural development on the international stage.

Traditional owners have never ceased to call for the return of all skeletal remains to their homelands, the shores of Lake Mungo. For many years that return anticipated the establishment of a special Keeping Place, a dignified and secure repository for all skeletal remains removed from the world heritage area. Economic and bureaucratic difficulties have frustrated the establishment of the Keeping Place for years. Now traditional owners have joined with involved scientists to jointly declare that 40 years is long enough for Mungo Man to stay in his cardboard box. It is time to come home, time to return to Lake Mungo’s shores.

The view west towards Lake Mungo shows massive erosion on a shoreline dune. Erosion exposes internal artefacts and human remains buried within the ancient shoreline. Photograph: Jim Bowler

A working party is striving to make his return possible. Mungo Man will find his resting place in the same secure storage shared by Mungo Lady since her return in 1991. This is a momentous occasion, a benchmark moment for traditional owners and a closing of the gap in my Mungo journey. It is an event of national significance. That homecoming opens new opportunities; new voices will be heard from ancient graves.

In emerging from that grave Mungo Man continues to challenge ignorance and prejudice. Such status takes on further legitimacy in the light of his liturgical burial. That action of ceremonial anointing with the earth, the ochre drama, defines new levels of communal self-perception, an awareness and celebration of a people-nature mystique, an acknowledgement of a power beyond. In that sense the burial stands arguably as the world’s oldest example of overt religious expression.

In my pursuit of rational science, those lakeshore sands, originally solely of geological interest, have been transformed into sacred grounds. My eyes have been opened to glimpse and share in some small way that inner view long entrusted to Mungo Man’s Aboriginal descendants, a deep connection to country, to their ancestral spirit-charged lands. I remain ever conscious of Mutthi Mutthi elder Mary Pappin’s admonition: “You did not find Mungo Lady and Mungo Man – they found you!”

Already taking his place in the school curriculum as a key focus in Aboriginal history, Mungo Man’s place as messenger stands in firm justification for national recognition. While Aboriginal Australia must speak in its own voice, as a scientist with a sense of humanity already much deepened by Mungo Man’s contribution, I confidently hope that what has been changed in me will be shared in the lives of many others.

The return opens a new chapter, one in which the voices from the past – the voices from those graves – return in spirit with the bones. My burden remains to speak to and for those voices, to interpret their meaning and to deliver in their death the messages they may have voiced in life.

Mungo Man crosses many boundaries, boundaries between science and traditional cultures, between past and present, between black and white, between life and death. On returning home, his voice takes on new urgency, defining messages for his land and for his people. That occasion, after 40 years in waiting, brings new hope, a reassurance to Indigenous Australians of the nation’s debt to their ancestral history.

Wednesday’s anniversary commemorates a day that greeted the arrival of a new actor on the dramatic stage of expanding Aboriginal history. It was a day that changed the way we see ourselves as Australians.