Australia The Cradle Of Civilisation
I found two fossil human skulls protruding from these sediments. Both fossils are actually endoctrinal casts of mudstone and display signs of considerable antiquity.
While one skull, the larger of the two, resembles "Solo Man" skulls of Java, a late Java Man type, ancestral to modern Homo sapiens who lived at least 500,000 years ago, with a receding forehead but lacking the thick eyebrow ridges of more primitive races; the smaller skull {a juvenile} is more primitive in appearance, with thick eyebrow ridges and a recedding forehead.
It is reminiscent of the Wadjak Man skulls of Java, an offshoot of Java Man ancestral to the Aboriginals. Even allowing for distortion due to soil pressure during the fossilisation process, the skulls certainly fit the picture already formed; of a primitive forerunner to the Aboriginals living side by side with a more modern-type race.
Both skulls are estimated to be anywhere up to 100,000 years old. On the basis of these discoveries some years ago I dared to suggest to prehistorians that, at some period in the remote past, populations of Homo erectus entered Australia to produce an offshoot from which the first Homo Sapiens evolved, eventually spreading across Asia into Europe, where they are known as Cro-magnon man.
At a later period the first primitive ancestors of the Aboriginals arrived here from south-east Asia to gradually spread throughout the continent, either killing off and/or inter-breeding with the early arrivals. At the time my theory was ridiculed. But recent discoveries are beginning to prove me correct.
That the first Homo sapiens evolved in Australia is not as fantastic as it may sound. Geneticists studying Aboriginal genes now suggest that modern man may have indeed originated in Australia to migrate out across the world 40,000 years ago.
Aboriginal traditions include references to a white-skinned race which inhabited Australia before them. They also know of a race of giants.
During the 1960's I uncovered a culture of giant-sized stone implements in the New South Wales central west. They included hand-axes, clubs, knives, adzes and other tools ranging in weights of from 5 and a half kilograms to 16 and a half kilograms. Such huge "Megatools" could only have been made and used by beings of immense stature and strength.
These implements are reminiscent of others found in Java, where Meganthropus, the "giant Java Man", lived during the last ice-age at least 500,00 years ago, whose huge fossil jaws and teeth suggest creatures of immense weight, who stood up to three times the height of modern man.
Did Meganthropus or a close relative of him once roam Australia? Giant-sized man-like fossil footprints, preserved in mudstone, have turned up all over Australia. They include examples found near Kempsey in northern New South Wales up to 50 cm in length by 37 cm width across the toes; and as much as 60 cm length by 25 cm or more in width.
During field studies in northern Tasmania I found another fossil man-like footprint of 40 cm length in solid sandstone near a Bass Strait beach, where the creature must have wandered across a former land-bridge.
Just how long ago these giant beings inhabited Australia is arguable, but the fact that most of the preserved tracks were once covered by flowing volcanic ash indicates that these monster ape-men must have lived here when the smaller relative, Homo erectus, inhabited Java, as most of the tracks were preserved by volcanic eruption which occured in Australia perhaps 500,000 or more years ago.
That primitive Java-type races were present in Australia 500,000 years ago must naturally seem absurb to anyone brought up on the idea that no-one existed in Australia before the Aboriginals.
Yet in the light of recent scientific findings it is obvious that this view is out of date. It is now evident that not only have the Aboriginals been present here much longer than was once thought possible, but that they were preceded here by an earlier form of modern man later to spread out from Australia in Asia, thence across Europe, where he was to become known as Cro-magnon Man, the "father" of civilisation.
There can therefore no longer be no doubt that Australia was indeed the "cradle" of civilisation.