Published Resources Details
Newspaper Article
- Title
- How ancient knowledge is making modern science sit up and pay attention
- In
- ABC News
- Description of Work
- Part of the ABC Deep Time project
- Imprint
- Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 31 October 2025
- Url
- https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-31/how-ancient-science-is-driving-modern-science/104872844
- Format
- HTML
- Contains
- Image
- Abstract
Tanya Charles says her ancestors' history may not be written down in books, but it is written into the land.
"My nan used to say scientists will never catch up to us, we're too old," she says, as rain falls on the dry lake bed known as Lake Mungo.
In 1968 when Mungo Lady and Mungo Man were found in the lunette dunes nearby, they rewrote the history books.
Up until then, scientists believed Aboriginal people had been living on the Australian continent for 20,000 years. But Lake Mungo reshaped the timeline.
Ms Charles believes Mungo Lady revealed herself to tell the world about Aboriginal peoples' continuous connection to country, stretching back to a time when giant animals roamed the Earth and when the land looked very different from today.
"To me it started here with Lady Mungo coming to life and putting her hand up and saying, 'Hey, I've been here longer than you and survived all of them different climates' - megafauna, ice age, big droughts, just surviving along with the animals and the plants, looking after Mother Earth," she says.