Willandra Lakes Region Australia

Willandra Lakes Region Australia

Short Report

The fossil remains of a number of lakes and sand formations from the pleistocene era forms part you will find in this area, together with archaeological evidence of human occupation dating from 45-60.000 years ago. It is a unique monument in the study of human evolution on the Australian continent. A few well-preserved fossils of giant marsupials is also to be found here.

Wide Report

The Willandra Lakes Region is mostly a geological site, with fauna and flora of significant interest in an archaeological meaning: the Willandra Lakes can be the best place for a link between the extinction of the giant marsupial fauna and predation by people. The Australian geological environment, with its low topographic relief and the low energy systems, is unique in the durability of the landscape. The site includes the entire lake and river system More Mulurulu, the last to hold water, the Prungle Lakes, dry for more than 15,000 years, and the region is unique in the world. The Willandra Lakes offer excellent conditions for the registration of events forms part of the pleistocene era epoch (when the man has developed to its current form), show how non-glaciated areas responded to the large climatic fluctuations between glacial periods. At Billabong Willandra Creek no longer to flow and thus to replenish the lakes, which dried in series from the Prungle lakes in the south to More Mulurulu in the north more than thousands of years; as each more evaporates, It was an independent system is undergoing a fundamental transformation of fresh water to salt water to dry lake bed.

As long as water remained in a more, dunes were built along the eastern edge. This system of transverse crescent dunes, called 'manoeuvring hooks or lunettes', in which evidence of past hydrological and geochemical environments. The freshwater lakes concentrated clean quartz sand on eastern beaches, but the lakes was more salty as they dried out, and clay pellets were broken off of the exposed more floor at high wind speeds to striking clay manoeuvring hooks or lunettes. This clay dunes are rare in the world, and the well-preserved fossil examples in the Willandra Lakes region an important geological resource; the 30 m high More Chibnalwood clay its lunette is one of the largest ski resorts in the world.

The Willandra Lakes Region is a remarkable example of a site where the economic life of Homo sapiens can be reconstructed, where a remarkable adaptation to local resources and a fascinating interaction between human culture and the changing natural environment. The fossil landscape is largely unchanged since the end of the last ice age pleistocene era forms part. Archaeological discoveries made here, are of excellent quality. They feature a 26,000-year-old cremation on the spot (the oldest known in the world), a 30,000 year-old ochre burial, the remains of a huge marsupials in a perfect state of conservation, And grinding wheels from 18,000 years ago used to crush wild grass for flour whose age is similar to that in the earliest seed-grind economies. The area also contains the remains of repatriation, some dating back to 30,000 years ago.

The region also offers proof of the furthermost point of dissemination reached during the last ice age by Homo sapiens and the earliest economic data in the world for human dependence of freshwater resources, in a pattern associated with Aboriginal People as recently as 100 years ago on the Darling River.

Source:whc/unesco