Lake Mungo

Lake Mungo is a dry lake located in south-eastern Australia, in the south-western portion of New South Wales. It is about 760 km due west of Sydney and 90 km north-east of Mildura. The lake is the central feature of Mungo National Park, and is one of seventeen lakes in the World Heritage listed Willandra Lakes Region. Many important archaeological findings have been made at the lake, most significantly the discovery of the remains of Mungo Man, the oldest human remains found in Australia,Mungo Woman, the oldest human remains in the world to be ritually cremated and as the location of the Lake Mungo geomagnetic excursion, the first convincing evidence that Geomagnetic excursions are a geomagnetic phenomenon rather than sedimentological.

Sediments at Lake Mungo have been deposited over more than 120,000 years. On the eastern side of the Mungo lakebed are the "Walls of China," a series of up to 40m high sand dunes that stretch for more than 33 km. There are three distinct layers of sands and soil forming the Walls. The oldest is the reddish Gol Gol layer, formed between 100,000 and 120,000 years ago. The middle greyish layer is the Mungo layer, deposited between 50,000 and 25,000 years ago. The most recent is the Zanci layer, which is pale brown, and was laid down mostly between 25,000 and 15,000 years ago.

The Mungo layer, which was deposited before the last ice age period, is the most archaeologically rich. Although the layer corresponded with a time of low rainfall and cooler weather, more rainwater ran off the western side of the Great Dividing Range during that period, keeping the lake full. It supported a significant human population, as well as many varieties of Australian megafauna.

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