'A big jump': People might have lived in Australia twice as long as we thought | Paul Daley

Submitted by Paul Daley on Mon, 11/03/2019 - 1:10pm

The result of 11 years of research suggests that human habitation could stretch to 120,000 years

Extensive archaeological research in southern Victoria has again raised the prospect that people have lived in Australia for 120,000 years – twice as long as the broadly accepted period of human continental habitation.

The research, with its contentious potential implications for Indigenous habitation of the continent that came to be Australia, has been presented to the Royal Society of Victoria by a group of academics including Jim Bowler, the eminent 88-year-old geologist who in 1969 and 1974 discovered the bones of Mungo Lady and Mungo Man, the oldest human remains found in Australia.

Who were they? Why here and not elsewhere?