Photos: 40,000-year-old Aboriginal remains return for outback burial
Updated On Nov 20, 2017 11:23 AM IST
The skeletal remains of Mungo Man, Australia's oldest anatomically modern human found to date were returned to the Aboriginal community for burial over four decades after their discovery and removal from Lake Mungo in 1974.
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Updated on Nov 20, 2017 11:23 AM IST
Robert Brouse-Flick, 15, a Tirkandi Inaburra Indigenous dancer performs during a ceremony to welcome ‘Mungo Man’ on November 16, 2017 in Hay, Australia. The 40,000-year-old remains of an Aboriginal man that prompted a drastic rewrite of Australian history --doubling the known length of human presence on the continent from 20,000 to 40,000 years-- were returned to his ancestral homeland after four decades of examination in the country’s capital. (Lisa Maree Williams / Getty Images)
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Updated on Nov 20, 2017 11:23 AM IST
Mungo Man was discovered in 1974, named so after the dry outback lake bed where the fully intact skeleton was found with limbs stretched out, hands crossed across his groin and covered in an ochre drawn from some 200 km away. The skeleton, along with 104 other remains, arrived in a black hearse with the black, yellow and red Aboriginal flag painted on its side. (Lisa Maree Williams / Getty Images)
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Guests take part in a smoking ceremony with green gum-leaves burning over a small fire during the arrival of Mungo Man and ancestors at the Balranald Aboriginal Cemetery on November 17, 2017 in Balranald. The bones’ removal to Canberra for study, roughly 600 km east of Lake Mungo, had angered the indigenous community there. (Lisa Maree Williams / Getty Images)
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Local indigenous people and visitors raise their hands towards the sky to welcome Mungo Man. “This, today, is one of those catalytic moments...it makes us, the traditional owners, custodians of our culture,” said Michael Young an Aboriginal elder. (Lisa Maree Williams / Getty Images)
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The 40,000 year old remains of Mungo Man contained in a casket made from 5000-year-old red gum arrive at the Lake Mungo ceremony on November 17, 2017. Though subsequent discoveries have pushed the date of human arrival in Australia further back, Mungo Man helped prove the ancient age of Aboriginal civilisation --the world’s oldest continuing culture- dating back around the time Neanderthals occupied Europe. (Lisa Maree Williams / Getty Images)
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Aboriginal people pay respect by placing eucalyptus on the remains of Mungo Man and ancestors during a ceremony in Hay. The Australian National University, whose researchers had removed the remains, issued a formal apology when it turned the remains over to the region’s Aboriginal custodians in 2015. (Lisa Maree Williams / Getty Images)
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The Tirkandi Inaburra Indigenous dancers welcome Mungo Man back to Aboriginal country during a ceremony on November 17, 2017 in Hay, Australia. “We’ve been waiting all those years to get him back and I’m so glad he is back, to put him in his resting place,” said Joan Slade, an elder of the Aboriginal Ngiyampaa people. (Lisa Maree Williams / Getty Images)
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Visitors and elders from the Aboriginal community attend repatriation ceremonies at Lake Mungo, on November 17, 2017. Elders said that the remains will be kept in a safe, secret location to preserve the legacy of knowledge provided by Mungo Man and other ancestors for future generations. (Lisa Maree Williams / Getty Images)
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Updated on Nov 20, 2017 11:23 AM IST