Journal ArticleDOI
New ages for human occupation and climatic change at Lake Mungo, Australia
J. M. Bowler,Harvey Johnston,Jon Olley,John R. Prescott,Richard G. Roberts,Wilfred Shawcross,Nigel A. Spooner,Nigel A. Spooner +7 more
TLDR
A new chronology corrects previous estimates for human burials at this important site and provides a new picture of Homo sapiens adapting to deteriorating climate in the world's driest inhabited continent.Abstract:
Australia's oldest human remains, found at Lake Mungo, include the world's oldest ritual ochre burial (Mungo III) and the first recorded cremation (Mungo I). Until now, the importance of these finds has been constrained by limited chronologies and palaeoenvironmental information. Mungo III, the source of the world's oldest human mitochondrial DNA, has been variously estimated at 30 thousand years (kyr) old, 42-45 kyr old and 62 +/- 6 kyr old, while radiocarbon estimates placed the Mungo I cremation near 20-26 kyr ago. Here we report a new series of 25 optical ages showing that both burials occurred at 40 +/- 2 kyr ago and that humans were present at Lake Mungo by 50-46 kyr ago, synchronously with, or soon after, initial occupation of northern and western Australia. Stratigraphic evidence indicates fluctuations between lake-full and drier conditions from 50 to 40 kyr ago, simultaneously with increased dust deposition, human arrival and continent-wide extinction of the megafauna. This was followed by sustained aridity between 40 and 30 kyr ago. This new chronology corrects previous estimates for human burials at this important site and provides a new picture of Homo sapiens adapting to deteriorating climate in the world's driest inhabited continent.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
The human Y chromosome: an evolutionary marker comes of age
TL;DR: The availability of the near-complete chromosome sequence, plus many new polymorphisms, a highly resolved phylogeny and insights into its mutation processes, now provide new avenues for investigating human evolution.
Journal ArticleDOI
Human occupation of northern Australia by 65,000 years ago
Chris Clarkson,Zenobia Jacobs,Zenobia Jacobs,Ben Marwick,Ben Marwick,Richard Fullagar,Lynley A. Wallis,Mike Smith,Richard G. Roberts,Richard G. Roberts,Elspeth Hayes,Kelsey M. Lowe,Xavier Carah,S. Anna Florin,Jessica McNeil,Jessica McNeil,Delyth Cox,Lee J. Arnold,Quan Hua,Jillian Huntley,Helen E. A. Brand,Tiina Manne,Andrew Fairbairn,James Shulmeister,Lindsey Lyle,Makiah Salinas,Mara Page,Kate Connell,Gayoung Park,Kasih Norman,Tessa Murphy,Colin Pardoe +31 more
TL;DR: The results of new excavations conducted at Madjedbebe, a rock shelter in northern Australia, set a new minimum age of around 65,000 years ago for the arrival of humans in Australia, the dispersal of modern humans out of Africa, and the subsequent interactions ofmodern humans with Neanderthals and Denisovans.
Journal ArticleDOI
Why did modern human populations disperse from Africa ca. 60,000 years ago? A new model
TL;DR: It is suggested here that the answer to why it took these populations approximately 100,000 years to disperse from Africa to other regions of the world has never been clearly resolved may lie partly in the results of recent DNA studies of present-day African populations, combined with a spate of new archaeological discoveries in Africa.
Journal ArticleDOI
Going east: new genetic and archaeological perspectives on the modern human colonization of Eurasia.
TL;DR: The archaeological and genetic evidence points to a single successful dispersal event, which took genetically and culturally modern populations fairly rapidly across southern and southeastern Asia into Australasia, and with only a secondary and later dispersal into Europe.
Book
Practical and theoretical geoarchaeology
TL;DR: In this article, a broad-based perspective of the essentials of modern geoarchaeology is presented to demonstrate the breadth of the approaches and the depth of the problems that it can tackle.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Optical dating of sediments
TL;DR: In this article, an argon-ion laser is used to excite electrons from thermally-stable light-sensitive traps and the subsequent luminescence used as a measure of the past radiation dose.
Journal ArticleDOI
Uranium-series disequilibrium: Applications to Earth, Marine, and environmental sciences
Book
Uranium-series disequilibrium: applications to earth, marine, and environmental sciences. 2. ed
M. Ivanovich,R. S. Harmon +1 more
TL;DR: The phenomenon of radioactivity geochemistry of actinides and their daughters uranium-series desequilibrium applications applications in geochronology chemical procedures spectroscopic methods mass spectrometry and applications to uranium series disequilibrium igneous rocks uranium series mobilization and surface hydrology ground water.
Journal ArticleDOI
New Ages for the Last Australian Megafauna: Continent-Wide Extinction About 46,000 Years Ago
Richard G. Roberts,Timothy F. Flannery,Linda K. Ayliffe,Hiroyuki Yoshida,Jon Olley,Gavin J. Prideaux,Geoff M. Laslett,Alexander Baynes,Mike Smith,Rhys Jones,Barton L. Smith +10 more
TL;DR: This work reports burial ages for megafauna from 28 sites and infer extinction across the continent around 46,400 years ago, ruling out extreme aridity at the Last Glacial Maximum as the cause of extinction, but not other climatic impacts; a "blitzkrieg" model of human-induced extinction; or an extended period of anthropogenic ecosystem disruption.
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