Lifestyle+and+Times+shown+by+evidence


 * Lifestyles and Times shown by evidence **

 Scientists had attempted to imagine the lifestyles of Lake Mungo Skeletons when they were alive. According to the Earth's time line, there is land fill with abundant food, river full of big fishes and mega-fauna blundered about, which lead the scientists to believe that maybe they lived a richer life than us. Up to about this stage, there was much argument as to where the first homo sapiens originated from. There are two theories: There were also arguments about the skeleton's age. With further studies and advanced technology, it was decided and accepted among the people that Mungo Lady is approximately 40,000 years old and Mungo Man around 42,000 years old. Burial practice of the Mungo Lady was different to the Mungo Man. It was found that Mungo Lady was first cremated and her remaining bones were smashed into pieces then cremated again by examining the patterns of her bone. This ritual had made scientists believe that Mungo Lady's family had tried to prevent Mungo Lady from returning to haunt them.The preservation of the bones were very poor. Perhaps it was the burning of the bones that scientists are unable to extract DNA from LM1. Mungo Man had been found with worn out bones from the elbow, commonly seen in those that throws spears, thus suggesting Mungo Man was a hunter when he was alive. He was buried, then had red ochre sprinkled on him. This is one of the earliest sophisticated artistic burial practices. As years past, scientists managed to retrieve mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) from Mungo Man's bone. This extraction of mtDNA was an attempt to answer where our earliest Australian inhabitants came from. Dr Adcock of ANU, who conducted the research on the mtDNA of LM3, was extremely careful not to contaminate teh samples with other organic matter or another human DNA. He prepared bone samples and extracted DNA in two separate laboratories 2 km apart, and human DNA had never been analysed in either laboratory. Working in sterile conditions, Dr Adcock was the only researcher to move between the two laboratories. Furthermore, he never travelled between the two laboratories on the same day to avoid cross contamination. By using the mtDNA samples from Mungo Man along with other ancient Aboriginals who died between 8,000 and 15,000 years ago, 45 living Aboriginals, 3,455 people from around the world, two European Neaderthals, a pygmy chimpanzee and a common chimpanzee, scientists produced a likely evolutionary tree from the mtDNA. This showed that chimpanzees, Neaderthal Man and Mungo Man were all branches from a common ancestor. Mungo Man was part of Australia's earliest history but it was a separate evolutionary line from most ancient Australian Aboriginals. Ancient Aboriginal Australians came from a further branch and were not directly descended from Mungo Man. This lead Thorne to believe that the 'Out of Africa' theory is incorrect.
 * Out of Africa Theory
 * [|Multi-Region Theory]

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