September 2019 | SMITHSONIAN.COM 49ing to the south, where Mungo Man and Mungo Lady
had both emerged from the sand, I tried to grasp
what 42,000 years actually meant. The Roman Em-
pire ended roughly 1,500 years ago, Troy fell 3,200
years ago, the Epic of Gilgamesh was written around
4,000 years ago. Beyond that, time unraveled.
I finally made the mental leap into prehistory
when I found myself on a hunt with an ice age fami-
ly. In 2003, a young Aboriginal ranger, Mary Pappin
Jr. (granddaughter of the activist Alice Kelly), made
an astounding discovery near Lake Mungo: more
than 560 footprints, later shown to be around 21,000
years old. This miraculous snapshot of Pleistocene
life featured 12 men, four women and seven children
who had walked across the soft clay around the lake,
which dried like concrete in the sun. The foot im-
pressions were then immersed in
drifting sands and preserved.
The footprints look as if they
were made yesterday. Analysis by
expert trackers reveals that the
group, presumably an extended
family, was moving at the steady
pace of long-distance runners. The
men were mostly on the outside of
the group, perhaps in hunting for-
mation; at one point, they paused
and rested their spears. The tallest
male, the forensic analysis sug-
gests, was 6-foot-6 with size 12 feet.
It seems that one man had lost a
leg and hopped without the aid
of a crutch. Another of the adults
was walking at a slower pace with
children—one wonders what they
were talking about. Suddenly the
millennia evaporated.IF EVEN A CASUAL visitor can
have cosmic flashes in this oth-
erworldly setting, Jim Bowler
has come to feel he was guided
by a higher force to Lake Mungo.
“The unlikely probability of be-
ing there just when Mungo Man’s
skeleton was starting to appear—
and find things thoroughly in-
tact!” he laughs. “It’s one in a
million.” As he approaches 90,
he is racing to complete a book
that will connect his personal
narrative to larger issues. “Mary
Pappin told me: ‘Mungo Man
and Mungo Lady, you didn’t find
them. They found you!’ ” he says.
They had messages to deliver, such as telling white
Australians that the time has come to acknowledge
the injustices inflicted upon Aboriginal people.
Bowler, the doctor of geology and the lapsed Jesu-
it, also wants Western culture to appreciate the in-
digenous worldview: “Do we have something to learn
from Aboriginal people?” he asks. “And if so, what?”
On sleepless nights he asks for guidance from Mungo
Man himself. “Aboriginal people have a deep spiritu-
al connection to the land. The ocher Mungo Man was
buried in was a link to the cosmos. Western culture has
lost these connections.” The use of stories and myths
by Aboriginal people, Native Americans and other in-
digenous groups also satisfies deep human longing for
meaning. “Science has trouble explaining mysteries.
There’s an entire reality beyond the scientific one.”The spectacular
“Walls of China”
formation, an
age-old series
of lunettes on
the eastern side
of Lake Mungo,
stretches over 20
miles and rises
to 130 feet.