The Sands of Time

It was all very puzzling, to say the least.БЂ«As it turned out, there would be a great deal else to be puzzled about, and one of the most puzzling findings of all would come from ThorneБЂ™s own part of the world, in the outback of Australia. In 1968, a geologist named Jim Bowler was poking around on a long-dried lakebed called Mungo in a parched and lonely corner of western New South Wales when something very unexpected caught his eye. Sticking out of a crescent-shaped sand ridge of a type known as a lunette were some human bones. At the time, it was believed that humans had been in Australia for no more than 8,000 years, but Mungo had been dry for 12,000 years. So what was anyone doing in such an inhospitable place? The answer, provided by carbon dating, was that the bonesБЂ™ owner had lived there when Lake Mungo was a much more agreeable habitat, a dozen miles long, full of water and fish, fringed by pleasant groves of casuarina trees. To everyoneБЂ™s astonishment, the bones turned out to be 23,000 years old ...»