Book Reviews
Mungo Man (WLH 3) features largely in both Westaway’s
and Webb’s chapters, together with photographs of his grave,
skull and mandible, and both he and Mungo Lady (WLH 1) are
now dated to about 40,000 years. However, the gracile form of
WLH 3 has led some archaeologists to doubt his masculinity. It
is worthwhile therefore to quote Webb when I questioned him
recently on this – ‘Take it from me, WLH 3 is male, and I have
examined it many times. The pelvis shows that the angle of the
sciatic notch (a definitive feature of the sex of any skeleton) is
male.’ Other evidence is his large femur head and his estimated
height of 170cm (5ft 7 inches) in contrast to Mungo Lady’s
estimated 148cm (4ft 10 inches). Furthermore, ‘he suffered from
severe osteoarthritis of the right elbow. This is likely to have been
the result of a lifetime’s use of the spear thrower or woomera’
(p.42; cf. Rhodes and Churchill 2009).
Not only does ‘woomera or atlatl elbow’ make it clear that
WLH 3 was male, but it also is remarkable evidence that 40,000
years ago Aboriginal Australians were using spear throwers.
Webb has been convinced of this for a decade, but his findings
have been tucked away in scientific works and not publicised. Just
to make absolutely sure, I asked Webb if the same osteoarthritis
could be produced by spear throwing without use of a woomera,
as was the case in Tasmania. His answer was an unequivocal ‘no’. It
seems that simple spear throwing does not cause this distinctive
elbow destruction because most of the forces are concentrated
in the shoulder joint. Webb has compared the elbows of those
who did not use spear throwers with those who did, and has
found that only the latter have the particular wear and extensive
destruction of the head of the radius. So, it seems clear that
Australia has the oldest known spear throwers in the world!
The final short chapters are devoted to ‘Caring for the
Willandra’, ‘Development of a Keeping Place’, ‘Working Together’
by Mary Pappin Senior, poems and art works by other Willandra
Indigenous people, ‘Joint Management in Mungo National Park’
and formation of the Three Traditional Tribal Groups (3TTG)
Elders Council. Michael Westaway was then Executive Officer for
the Willandra Lakes region and worked very closely with the Elders
Council. Westaway made a huge contribution to the final stages of
production of Mungo over Millennia, but the initial inspiration
came from a 2004 visit to Mungo by Helen Lawrence, when she
was shown round by local elders. This is Lawrence’s seventh book.
After a career in physiotherapy, she completed as a mature age
student an external degree in archaeology and palaeoanthropology
at the University of New England in 2000. Since then she has
written several books for the general public, notably Making
Friends with Fossils – How to Find your Way Through the Maze of
Human Origins (2003); Call of the Black Cockatoo (a novel based
on Tasmanian Aboriginal archaeology) (2004); Eve’s Family Tree
– Further Scrutiny of Human Origins (2005); and finally, Mungo
over Millennia (2006). All were published by Maygog Publishing,
Hobart, where she now works as editor. At the ripe age of 81, Helen
Lawrence is an inspiration to all of us to keep on keeping on!
This booklet is a perfect introduction for anyone planning a
visit to Mungo National Park. It is not a guidebook, but tours by
Indigenous rangers are available and a ‘keeping place’ education
and research centre is being developed that will essentially act
as a regional museum operated by the Elders Council. Here it
is possible to view the excellent CD Lake Mungo – Window to
Australia’s Past produced by Jim Bowler.
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References
Rhodes, J.A. and S.E. Churchill 2009 Throwing in the Middle and Upper Paleolithic:
Inferences from an analysis of human retroversion. Journal of Human
Evolution 56:1-10.
Webb, S. 1989 The Willandra Lakes Hominids. Canberra: Department of Prehistory,
Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University.
Webb, S. 1995 Palaeopathology of Aboriginal Australians: Health and Disease Across
a Hunter-Gatherer Continent. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
The Discovery of the Hobbit: The
Scientific Breakthrough that
Changed the Face of Human History
Mike Morwood & Penny van Oosterzee
Random House, Sydney, 2007, 326pp, ISBN 978 1 74166 702 8
Reviewed by Michael Green
Museum Victoria, PO Box 666, Melbourne, VIC 3001, Australia
If the discoveries announced to the world in 2004 of a 1.3m,
small-brained human species living on the island of Flores
between 95,000 and 12,000 years ago still quite haven’t made it
onto your radar, and you’d like to learn more, then this is the
book for you. However, even if you have heard all about it, you
almost certainly won’t have the degree of insight that the authors
present here regarding some of the political machinations and
(pardon the pun) downright skulduggery that apparently went
on behind the scenes.
I need to get one thing clear from the outset – I firmly believe
that the Hobbit (and now that I’ve got your attention, that is the
last time I’ll use the word), properly known as Homo floresiensis,
is the real deal. Not a Laron Syndrome- or MOPD II-induced
microcephalic modern human dwarf suffering from pathological
shoulders, wrists, feet and brain, or even fillings, but a new
species that is a fully fledged member of our human lineage.
I felt that had to be said as the debate has polarised opinion
around the world, and I didn’t want you trying to second-guess
my position and have that get in the way of this review. That
said, I don’t want to get into the debate here and now, as exciting
and controversial as that is. Arguments have raged over the last
four years regarding the nature and taxonomic relationships of
the little people of Liang Bua, and it seems that for a while we
needed insightful review articles every three or four months just
to keep up. We’re probably due for another one pretty soon, but
this is not it.
Instead, I want to applaud Mike Morwood and Penny van
Oosterzee’s book on the background to the Flores discoveries
and the impacts they had on the lives of the central players.
Among many standout features of the book, I was struck
by the humanity of the story, of Morwood’s rollercoaster
of anxiety, delight and frustration, of Peter Brown’s
amazement and stubbornness, and of the complex and
intricate network of political obligation and social hierarchy
that seems to characterise Indonesia’s archaeological and
palaeoanthropological fraternity.
With van Oosterzee’s extremely able assistance, Morwood
traverses the rich historical, intellectual and physical landscapes
that characterise H. floresiensis’ discovery and the public reaction
to it. As one would expect there are plenty of references to the
Number 68, June 2009
Book Reviews
historical contexts against which the discovery had to be assessed.
References to Darwin, Wallace and Dubois are de rigour, but
the time taken to acknowledge the vital contribution of Father
Theodor Verhoeven as the first (albeit amateur) archaeologist
to investigate Flores’ Pleistocene history is poignant. Morwood
introduces some of the historical figures involved in Dutch
palaeontology and geology during the 1960s, and the ways in
which they snubbed Verhoeven’s conclusions about the early
presence of Homo erectus in Southeast Asia, some 30 years prior
to the more recent discoveries in Flores. I initially wondered at
the reason why so much time would be spent on presenting such
a minor matter, but I believe that Morwood genuinely wanted to
amend the historical record in this regard and allow Verhoeven
to have his moment in the sun. From Morwood’s point of view, it
also helps to understand why it took so long for recent attention
to swing away from Africa and back to Asia as an important
source of new information about the human story.
As those of you who have heard Morwood speak on the
subject know, he is all about history as an essential context
for understanding the present, and for him the littlest detail
is important, even to the point of identifying by name the
Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of New England who
prevented Morwood from returning to Indonesia at a time when
tensions between the senior research partners were admittedly
high and there was a serious risk that the fossil remains would
be transferred out of the project team’s custody.
In fact, Morwood is big on naming names. His warts-andall, blow-by-blow description of the sequence of events that
saw a breakdown in his partnership with Raden Pandji Soejono,
and the temporary loss of the remains to Teuku Jacob and the
subsequent public stoush over the damage that they sustained, is
a little shocking. But then again, the whole sorry saga has left a
somewhat bitter aftertaste, played out as it was in the public arena,
and it is possible that Morwood felt it was important for him to
put forward his version of the story in a more comprehensive
and controlled setting. And it is these very features of the book
that make the story so appealing – it presents the players as
human, as people with foibles, and not as disembodied research
machines who take a back seat to their discoveries.
The authors devote quite a bit of space to educating the
reader about the principles of island biogeography, and the
evolutionary mechanisms that make big animals small and
vice versa. Their relevance to arguments about how such a
small-bodied, small-brained individual as LB1 could have
come to be is lucidly presented. What is not so well explained,
however, is the fact that according to archaeological evidence,
H. floresiensis co-exists with modern Homo sapiens in the
region for at least 38,000 years, until the demise of the former
at around 12,000 BP, without there being any evidence for
modern humans on Flores until after the other’s disappearance
from the fossil record. Their conclusion that modern humans
were responsible for the extinction of the little people is at odds
with their references to oral histories that indicate the possible
presence of ‘hairy little men’ until recent times. You can’t have
it both ways.
One of the most interesting parts of the book for me was
Morwood’s description of the various models the research
partners argued in order to develop a taxonomy for H. floresiensis.
This was a rare insight into the process, and helped to situate the
remains within a broader international perspective. Of course,
the debate still rages.
Morwood clearly respects local customs. He was not averse
to allowing chickens to be sacrificed and their entrails consulted
in order for work to able to proceed smoothly. In fact, Mowood
spends quite a bit of time describing the day-to-day working life
of a field archaeologist, which for many non-specialist readers
will be somewhat of a revelation. Despite the cheese factor
sometimes reaching dangerously high levels (the ‘unchewable
meat’ story on p.36 sounds like a ‘you had to be there’ kind of
moment), the general tone of the book is very engaging apart
from the occasional aside where some readers will wonder at
their relevance.
This is a great read, one that I would recommend wholeheartedly.
OCEANIC EXPLORATIONS: LAPITA AND
WESTERN PACIFIC SETTLEMENT
Stuart
Bedford,
Christophe
S.P. Connaughton (ed.)
Sand
&
Terra Australis 26, ANU E Press, Canberra, 2007, x+299pp, ISBN
9780975122907
Reviewed by Patrick V. Kirch
Departments of Anthropology and Integrative Biology,
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Over the past two decades, the field of Lapita studies has witnessed
a sustained period of intellectual growth that can be traced back
to the stimulus first generated by the Lapita Homeland Project
of the mid-1980s. This reflects the now widely-acknowledged
significance of Lapita as the archaeological signature of a critical
period of expansion of one branch of Austronesian-speaking
peoples into Near Oceania, and beyond into the previously
unoccupied archipelagoes of Remote Oceania. The dominance
of Lapita studies in Oceanic archaeology also stems from
continuing and sustained field projects in such areas as the
Bismarck Archipelago, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji and Tonga,
which have continued to provide new and sometimes startling
evidence with which to reassess our hypotheses and models
about what Lapita represents.
Oceanic Explorations is the latest in a series of proceedings
derived from various conferences of Lapita investigators, in this
case the Nuku‘alofa gathering which was organised by David
Burley and convened in the Tongan capital on 1–7 August
2005. The volume contains an Introduction followed by 16
papers, subdivided by the editors into three themes: (1) ‘Lapita
Origins’ (two articles); (2) ‘Lapita Dispersal and Archaeological
Signatures’ (the largest section with nine articles); and (3) ‘Lapita
Ceramics’ (with five articles). The contributions vary widely in
scope and significance, ranging from masterly syntheses such as
Pawley’s treatment of the ‘testimony of historical linguistics’ and
Chiu’s insightful work on Lapita faces, to preliminary reports on
recent fieldwork (Felgate on New Georgia; Galipaud and Kelly on
Aore Island; Nunn on Rove, Fiji; and, Connaughton on Falevai).
Despite such unevenness, typical of this genre of conference
proceedings, Oceanic Explorations is a valuable addition to the
Lapita literature, one that will be essential reading for Oceanic
Number 68, June 2009
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