Scientists examining an ancient Aboriginal site at Warrnambool in south-west Victoria are split over whether charred rocks and weather-worn shells are 120,000-year-old evidence of Indigenous life.
If the discoveries at the rocky headland, called Moyjil — or Point Ritchie — are proved to be as old as some scientists’ believe, they would affect global understandings of human migration.
Researchers from multiple universities have been studying the site for years, and with the latest research on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic, it might be some time before a definitive conclusion can be made about whether or not Indigenous Australians were inhabiting the site more than twice as long ago as previously thought.
Famed Lake Mungo geologist Jim Bowler, now in his 90s, is convinced the evidence found at Moyjil indicates that humans were cooking and eating at the site 120,000 years ago.
But Monash University Indigenous Archaeology professor Ian McNiven, who has been studying Moyjil for almost a decade, is more reluctant to draw such conclusions.
Professor McNiven described it as “the hardest archaeological site that I’ve been involved with in my entire career”.
“Trying to work out whether it’s human or not; this site is not giving up its secrets easily,” Professor McNiven said.
Meanwhile, Gunditjmara man John Clarke says according to his cultural beliefs, his people have been in this part of the world forever.
Unearthing ancient clues
At the heart of the research are some charred rocks that might once have been part of a cooking hearth used by Gunditjmara people, and some shells that could be evidence of their early diet.
The researchers are hoping that a segment of a potential fireplace, which has been impregnated with resin and will be examined by Boston University geologist Paul Goldberg, will provide further clues.
The stones and shells have been found embedded in a layer of sand and also attached to other rock formations at the headland.
The Moyjil site has long been of interest to scientists, and has been the subject of a study by Professor McNiven, Deakin University’s Dr John Sherwood, Federation University’s Dr Stephen Carey, and Dr Bowler, who is a professorial fellow with the University of Melbourne.
Moyjil is constantly battered by the wild Southern Ocean and harsh south-westerly winds that have earned this treacherous stretch of cliffs and rugged beaches the moniker of ‘The Shipwreck Coast’.
It sits next to the mouth of the Hopkins River and a few hundred metres from a whale nursery, where southern right whales return year after year to birth their young.
The scientists all agree that Moyjil was a place where Aboriginal people returned to time and time again — the sand dunes surrounding it are filled with younger middens that are at least hundreds of years old.
But it’s the 120,000-year-old clues that scientists have been mulling over since the 1980s that continue to spark excitement, intrigue and a good measure of caution.
Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage director Bert Roberts said Moyjil wasn’t a “standard” archaeological site because it lacked obvious signs of human activity, such as stone tools.
He said the dating methods used in the study, including luminescence techniques, were sound.
“I don’t have an issue with the age but the question is, what are we actually dating?” he said.
‘It’s only the age that makes everyone so cautious’
Dr Sherwood, a Warrnambool-based scientist who co-ordinated the study, has been trying to unravel the mysteries of Moyjil since geologist and former deputy director of the National Museum of Victoria, the late Edmund Gill, pointed out the unusual deposits to him a few years before his death in 1986.
The prominent headland’s layers contain the stories of sea-level changes, seismic events and ash from a nearby volcanic eruption at Tower Hill that took place about 35,000 years ago.
“Our story starts after that 125,000-year-old sea level starts to drop,” Dr Sherwood said.
“This becomes dry land again and it’s a flat rock shelf.
“For some reason, blackened stones start to appear on it, then sand buries those, and eventually we get shells and charcoal all the way through it.”
Those blackened stones — which some members of the team believe have been fractured by being repeatedly burnt — the discarded shells and the charcoal are at the centre of the research project.
The rocks and shells, and the sand that surrounds them in some places, have all been separately dated to that period 120,000 years ago, which correlates with the last interglacial period that began 130,000 years ago and ended about 115,000 years ago.
But how they got there is unknown.
“You can argue that sea birds might have collected the shells, but you then have to explain the blackening of the stones,” Dr Sherwood said.
“And if that was a wildfire, it would have to have been a very intense wildfire to blacken stones right through and crack them.
“It’s either two quite bizarre explanations — wildfire and seabirds — or it’s one simple explanation, which is humans.
“That’s basically our dilemma.”
Dr Sherwood said without the complexity of the 120,000-year date, which challenges global theories about how people migrated out of Africa and dispersed around the world, it’s likely the site would be considered to contain evidence of human activity.
“Before we knew the age was 120,000 years, when we just knew it was old, archaeologists said to me, ‘if you don’t tell me how old this is, I’m prepared to believe this is a human midden’,” Dr Sherwood said.
“It’s only the age that makes everyone so cautious.”
‘We have always been here’
Traditional owners say they don’t need scientists to tell them how long ago their ancestors lived in the area.
As far as Mara man John Clarke, from the Eastern Maar Aboriginal Corporation is concerned, the official age of human activity at Moyjil doesn’t matter.
“We believe that we have always been here,” Mr Clarke said.
“We are from here, we were created through our creator Bunjil, and we have remained here forever.”
He said in some ways, if the 120,000-year-old deposits were recognised as resulting from human activity, it would “vindicate” Gunditjmara beliefs.
“In saying that, when we speak to other Aboriginal people about Country we never speak about the antiquity of any place because it doesn’t really matter,” he said.
He said in the past, traditional owners had been excluded from scientific studies but projects like the one at Moyjil included local Aboriginal groups.
“We have lots of good discussions with the researchers,” Mr Clarke said.
“There’s a lot of questions that are asked and I think there is a very healthy mutual respect.
“Certainly there is a greater respect for the rights of communities to have a say on their cultural heritage, and not only have a say but to have ownership of their cultural heritage.”
‘I’ve had sleepless nights’
Dr Bowler said he had been convinced for some time that a thorough research project was needed to examine Moyjil.
He said the evidence at Moyjil showed humans were there at least 120,000 years ago — a conclusion he described as “terrifying” to declare publicly.
He said people would look for confirmatory evidence to back up his claim but “it may never come”.
“We have to deal with what we’ve got,” he said.
“If I pretended I was not convinced they were people that would be a greater evil than running the risk of starting scandal by claiming human occupation at 120,000 years, which many archaeologists would see as scandalous and unjustified.
“I have to bite that bullet.”
Dr Bowler said his conviction was formed partly in consideration of the Occam’s razor principle: “Of two explanations that account for all the facts, the simpler one is more likely to be correct.”
“The irony of this is we have consistently tried to prove ourselves wrong,” he said.
“My geological colleagues said you’ve got to stop saying this because nobody will believe you.”
‘Poor’ evidence of human presence
Although Dr Bowler has been less involved in the project at Moyjil since the team’s research was published in the Royal Society of Victoria journal in 2018, the other scientists have continued their work.
Professor McNiven said over time opinions and conclusions about the site within the team had diverged.
“I put myself at one extreme, which some may say is a more conservative view,” he said.
“I still believe that evidence to demonstrate an Aboriginal presence there is poor at the moment.
“I wouldn’t say it’s out of the question — I still think we need to do more work, which is why I’m still involved.
“I won’t be satisfied with my involvement until we can at least get some sort of resolution.
“Whether it ends up being cultural or whether it ends up being natural, I just want to see it resolved.”
He believes the shells could have been collected by birds and that other explanations, such as organic staining, could account for the blackening of the stones.
Professor McNiven said the lack of any stone tools at the site also concerned him.
“How come we have such a big site that potentially has spanned thousands of years and nobody ever put a stone artefact there?” he said.
“Seems very odd to me.”
He said he was leaning strongly towards the conclusion that the evidence doesn’t show people were there all that time ago, but he was not 100 per cent certain.
“It’s a huge responsibility because if it is a human site … that is a game-changer in terms of our understanding of the human history of Australia and in terms of the whole out-of-Africa theory of modern human origins and the spread of modern humans across the globe,” Professor McNiven said.
On the subject of the car park and lookout that sits on top of Moyjil today, where people frequently go to eat fish and chips, Professor McNiven makes an astute observation.
“People are doing the same thing they’ve always done,” he said.
“They’re visiting Moyjil to eat seafood.”
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