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This clip from 1984 shows Dr Alan Thorne holding two skulls as he explains his controversial theory, based on bones found at Australian archaeological sites, that there were two peoples in what is termed prehistoric Australia. He says that the remains found in Kow Swamp, Victoria, belong to large and robust people who ‘show clear links with much earlier people in Indonesia’. He says that the remains found at Lake Mungo, New South Wales, are those of physically finer people who ‘show clear links with people in eastern Asia, particularly in China’. He further theorises that ‘these two sorts of people fused together’ to produce modern Aboriginal people.

Educational value points

• This clip presents Thorne’s controversial theory that modern Aboriginal peoples are descended from two very different groups, identified from bones found at Lake Mungo and at Kow Swamp that he subsequently dated as 60,000 years old. He theorised that, from a common ancestor in Africa, modern humans evolved in multiple locations. That theory, the dating and Thorne’s interpretation of his later mitochondrial DNA tests have been strongly criticised.

• Thorne’s original theory was part of scientific discussions in the 1980s that acknowledged the vast lengths of time involved in Aboriginal occupation of Australia and rejected the notion that Aboriginal peoples and the land had been unchanging. According to Professor Jim Bowler, who discovered the remains, the significance of Mungo Man and Mungo Woman is that their remains were the earliest known ritual burials in the world. The remains indicate cremation and show that the cultural traditions of Aboriginal peoples have existed in Australia for at least 40,000 years.

• Thorne theorised that humans emerged in several parts of the world from the mixing of different groups, a theory that is not accepted by many scientists. Bowler disputes the accuracy and methodology of Thorne’s dating of the bones. Peter Brown, another scientist, argues that the differences between skulls relate to gender and that there is no great difference between ancient and modern Aboriginal peoples.

• The scientific explanation presented in the clip about the origin of Indigenous Australians is one approach, but Indigenous belief systems explain that Aboriginal peoples were born of the land and have always been here. Aboriginal peoples believe that ancestral beings created the land and all its features and gave the original inhabitants knowledge of how to maintain and protect the land, as well as giving them their laws and social structures.

• There have been many important archaeological finds at Lake Mungo – a dry lake bed that in the Ice Age was a rich water-covered area – in south-western NSW. Mungo Woman, a partially cremated body, was discovered in 1969 by Bowler, a geologist. Thorne then reassembled the bone fragments to reconstruct the cremated skeleton of a young woman. In 1974 Bowler discovered the burial site of Mungo Man. In 2003 Bowler organised experts from six organisations and universities to date the remains using multiple laboratories and dating methods. The researchers found that both Mungo Man and Mungo Woman were around 40,000 years old.

• Kow Swamp is 10 km south-east of Cohuna in the central Murray region of Victoria. Between 1968 and 1972 the partial skeletal remains of 22 people were recovered from the Swamp. In 1984 the Aboriginal people of that area requested that the bones be reburied and the Victorian state relics legislation was amended to allow that to happen.

• This clip exemplifies the scientific approach in the documentary Out of Darkness to questions about the presence of Aboriginal peoples in Australia. It outlines archaeological findings and ideas about ancient Aboriginal history and culture.