A THOROUGH analysis of the burial site of Australia's oldest human remains could settle a long and acrimonious debate over when humans first colonised the continent.
Experts have been arguing for decades about the age of the skeleton, dubbed Mungo Man. Now its discoverer says he has confirmed that it is 40,000 years old. That date will reassure many palaeontologists, because if it were significantly older, Mungo Man would have challenged the dearly held "Out of Africa" hypothesis. This states that
"Australia's colonisation is one of the keys to our understanding of how
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