Stoney Snapshot

The world's largest collection of human fossil footprints have been found in a national park in western New South Wales.

The prints are 19,000 to 23,000-years-old and date back to the Ice Age.

They were found in the Mungo National Park at Willandra and the site contains more than 450 well preserved footprints of men, women and children.

New South Wales Environment Minister Bob Debus says the site shows a large group of people walking and interacting with one another.

"We see children running between the tracks of their parents, the children running in meandering circles as their parents travel in direct lines," he said.

"It's a most extraordinary snapshot of a moment or several moments in the life of Aboriginal people living on the edge of the lake in western New South Wales 20,000 years ago.

From ABC News Online

Exciting stuff. Mungo National Park is the location of several ancient human finds, most famously "Mungo Man" aka Mungo III, whose age has been bickered over but is now agreed (from what I can ascertain) to be around 40 000 years old, and "Mungo Lady" aka Mungo I, the oldest known cremation, coming in at around the same age.

The dating of the Mungo finds is -- as with everything in the field -- highly controversial; some feel that the fact that Mungo III has no traces of the mitochondrial DNA of the ancient African finds raises serious questions about the Out of Africa theory. Others say, just as vehemently, that this is absolute codswallop. My sympathies lie with the former theory, but that loyalty comes from an emotional basis rather than one of research and information, so I generally tend to keep that to myself. Either way, it's compelling reading, and all the more so because it's based right here in Australia.

Incidentally, the Mungo remains were returned to the traditional owners of the Willandra region. They cooperated closely on the project, and as the discoverer of the remains, Professor Jim Bowler, noted, "This represents an important new phase in the collaboration between science and traditional owners. Science and the Australian community owe them a special debt of gratitude."

Further reading:

New ages for human occupation and climate change at Lake Mungo, Australia
University of New England

Mungo Man's DNA shakes the Homo family tree
University of New England

World's oldest burial redated to 40 000 years
ABC Science Online

Lake Mungo 3
University of New England

Mitochondrial DNA sequences in ancient Australians: Implications for modern human origin Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies and John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University, et al.

Out of Africa vs Multiregionalism
stephenjaygould.org

'Intelligent design' teaching ban

A court in the US has ruled against the teaching of "intelligent design" alongside Darwin's theory of evolution.

A group of parents in the Pennsylvania town of Dover had taken the school board to court for demanding biology classes not teach evolution as fact.

The authorities wanted to introduce the idea that Earth's life was too complicated to have evolved on its own.

Judge John Jones ruled the school board had violated the constitutional ban on teaching religion in public schools.

The 11 parents who brought the case argued that teaching intelligent design (ID) was effectively teaching creationism, which is banned.

The rest of the story here, on BBC News.

I'm so relieved to read this. A small glimmer of hope in the news.

I'm Expired!

R.I.P Big Kev

Cleaning products salesman, loud shirt connoisseur, daytime TV uber-god and all-round big guy, Kevin "Big Kev" McQuay died this week aged 55.

Big Kev -- The Excited One

Big Kev, famous for his catchline, I'm excited!, died on Monday following a heart attack.

Fellow ironic icon and home shopping maven, Tim Shaw, said that Kev was a "lovely guy, ebullient, just a fantastic personality..."

"He loved his family and loved making a sale," says Tim. And Kev really was excited - "He loved what he did. He loved bringing great Australian ideas into Australian homes."

Tim Shaw -- The "But wait! There's more!" One

Tim continues: "The great joy of home shopping is that it brings out all these personalities...you see some great Australian innovation on all of our home shopping television screens...Big Kev pioneered that." (Tim Shaw interview from ABC Online)

Hand to the Rudder

I’ve always been a keen reader, but now that my thoughts are turning more and more to writing, reading has taken on the whiff of work. This is not necessarily a bad thing; it’s just a change I’ve noticed. My reading is now akin to strolling on the beach: eyes down, scanning the sand for treasures left by the tide, moving on from the mundane, gathering any tit bits with a bit of shine and bower-birding them away for later.

To find a phrase beautifully crafted leaves my feelings very much mixed. The wash of sensual and intellectual pleasure soon recedes, leaving only the damp sand of despondency. It’s intimidating. Once you’ve read the perfect description of something, will anything you come up with on your own ever do? Individual phrases needle me like this; so good, so perfect that my own mind is paralysed to other possible descriptions.

So many sublime works of art have been accomplished that sometimes I wonder if there’s any point in creating anything in this modern age. Why paint when there are Caravaggios in the world? What could any of us have to say that Twain, Kafka, Montaigne haven’t phrased to perfection already?

Well, who can possibly know until they’ve said it?

I can think of two good reasons for creating artwork. One is to better ourselves, as a tool of reflection -- who couldn’t benefit from that? The other reason is to better the world we live in. Culture is dynamic, and by taking an active part in it we can, in a small way, put our hand to the rope that’s pulling us all along as a people, rather than simply be towed along in whatever direction it happens to be going. None of us can say where our efforts will lead, perhaps not even in our lifetime, or even several lifetimes. And I’m not talking about Van Gogh-style posthumous glory here –- I simply mean giving the social rudder a gentle push in one direction or another. Contributing to the momentum of our culture –- the pleasure, the laughter, the criticism, the analysis and the introspection –- is probably reason enough.