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Broadcast: 9/5/2001
Palaeontologist discusses Mungo man findings
So is Mungo Man the original colonial upstart? Certainly he has caused some annoyance to members of the scientific community back in Britain. Tony Jones speaks with Professor Chris Stringer, one of the world's leading palaeontologists from London's Natural History Museum.

Compere: Tony Jones
Reporter: Tony Jones

TONY JONES: Chris Stringer, this has become an extremely heated debate and one gets the impression that scientific reputations appear to be riding on the outcome as well as long-held theories about the origins of modern man.

Do you agree with that?

PROFESSOR CHRIS STRINGER, LONDON NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM: Yes, certainly this has been a debate which has got quite heated and personal at times over the last -- especially the last 10 years I would say.

But I still think we are making progress and I think everyone ultimately does want to achieve a resolution of finding out where we came from.

TONY JONES: Do you feel at all threatened by the results of these Australian scientists?

CHRIS STRINGER: No, not at all.

I think I welcome data from any part of the world that can help us reconstruct our origins.

And the Mungo find is extremely important.

Whether the DNA is really ancient DNA is obviously a particular issue but the Mungo find itself is extremely important.

It tells us that modern people and modern behaviour were in Australia a long time before modern humans and modern behaviour arrived in Europe so I think that's a very important finding.

TONY JONES: Let's look at the evidence, DNA evidence in particular.

What makes you doubt the DNA testing that's been done on Mungo Man?

CHRIS STRINGER: I think it's based on experience really in Europe where we have been trying to recover DNA from European fossils -- the Neanderthals and the Cro-Magnons and there we found that in most cases we failed to extract DNA which is really ancient DNA.

There's a lot of DNA around but most of its contamination.

Any lab however good it is will have contamination problems.

I think the question is could there be DNA in a skeleton, not a well-preserved skeleton, 60,000-years-old buried in sand.

That's certainly not something we have found in any European site.

This DNA would be the oldest human DNA ever recovered from anywhere in the world.

TONY JONES: Are you arguing there's been something wrong in the procedure in all 10 of the specimens tested or just one of them?

CHRIS STRINGER: I think the recovery of DNA out of 10 out of 12 specimens from Australia, fossil specimens is -- would be quite exceptional.

We just published a note in 'Nature' which looks at the recovery of DNA from the Neanderthals and what we said there was you have to have low temperature for DNA preservation so I think that's the first thing and most European Neanderthals will not have DNA according to our theoretical modelling.

So when one looks at Australia and, you know a desert condition it becomes very difficult to think there will be DNA but, as I say, the main thing I would ask I suppose, is other labs should be allowed to replicate the results.

TONY JONES: We do know the extraordinary precautions they took against contamination.

They only used specimens picked out with tweezers.

They drilled inside the bones to take their specimens.

They even had samples taken of their own blood to make sure there was no cross-contamination from the scientists themselves.

Those procedures aren't good enough?

CHRIS STRINGER: They're the procedures which have to be used in ancient DNA and I have used that too in work I have done with scientists at Oxford, my DNA has been tested and unfortunately even the best lab procedures in Oxford have inevitably had contamination.

The majority of DNA covered even in these labs in Oxford was contamination and it was recognised as such.

TONY JONES: You say you want tests done by other laboratories and that now is precisely what the ANU scientists are doing in several laboratories -- international laboratories.

They're going to have these tests redone.

Now, if what they have shown is accepted also by these other laboratories, will you accept that they were right all along?

CHRIS STRINGER: Well, I haven't said they're wrong necessarily.

I said the results need to be replicated because it's an exceptional recovery of ancient DNA and even if the results are exactly as they've reported which would be great.

It would be great news for ancient DNA if there is DNA in material 60,000-years-old.

This will be wonderful news and we can expect many more results in material of that age than we have managed to achieve so far.

But as I say, if the results are confirmed, what it will show in the view of the people I have worked with at Oxford where we have redrawn these trees is that the Mungo DNA, even as recovered, will actually be within the range of the DNA of modern humans.

It will not be an exception, it will not be an outgroup.

TONY JONES: Now your Out of Africa theory, if I understand it correctly, argues that modern man evolved in Africa and started migrating from there 100-200,000 years ago.

Can you possibly co-opt a 63,000-year-old Mungo Man into that theory?

CHRIS STRINGER: Yes, I think what I would argue is that we originated in Africa between 100-200,000 years ago and we began to migrate from Africa, disperse from there about 100,000 years ago and arrived in Australia 60,000 years ago is perfectly feasible.

Looking at Mungo Man, it seems to me perfectly reasonable that the Mungo individuals and other early Australians are derived from African ancestors of 100 or 150,000 years ago.

TONY JONES: Of course, the Australian scientists like Dr Thorne are saying there's no time in your theory for a distinct racial group to have developed in Australia and for your theory to still be exactly as it was without major modification.

CHRIS STRINGER: Well, I think we don't really know the time scale of the origin of, let's say, Australians.

What the evidence seems to suggest now genetically and physically is that modern races, if we can use that term -- I use it with a great deal of caution -- let's say regional groups, regional populations, they seem to have developed very recently.

In the fossil record we can't find clear evidence of really distinct groups as we know them today until the last 30 or 40,000 years ago.

The Mungo individual at 60,000, is 60,000 years away from present-day Australians so I think we don't yet know whether that individual is really like recent Australians.

I would be very surprised if it was.

TONY JONES: Dr Thorne certainly seems to believe that that individual would be perfectly compatible with today's Aboriginal groups.

CHRIS STRINGER: That may be so but I don't think it's complete enough that we can really tell.

I don't believe there was necessarily a complete reproductive barrier as modern humans spread out to other parts of the world.

In Europe there might have been a degree of hybridisation with Neanderthals.

There might have been a degree of hybridisation with archaic people in the Far East but I think the genetic evidence of mitochondrial DNA and white chromosome DNA where we have large samples of a lot of people from all over the world at present shows no evidence of it.

But if it happened in a small-scale, perhaps those genes still have to be identified and maybe they are indeed around.

TONY JONES: Yes, the idea of the hybridisation does seem to make sense.

Are we likely to find proof of that as we further the examination of the genetic origins of man?

CHRIS STRINGER: Well, yes, I would say that most of the genetic data certainly supports recent African origin.

But there's some genetic data in some systems that suggests there are ancient genes that have a long history, for example, in Asia that might go back to previous populations in Asia that were 2 or 3 or 400,000-years-old.

If those analyses are correct, there might be genes from these people into modern people.

If we're looking at the question where did modern humans originate as a species, if we're looking for where our chin came from, our small browage, our high forehead, our distinctive skull shape, our distinctive lightly-built skeleton, in my view, the evidence still points to Africa as the source of our shared modern features, but perhaps, and I say it is a perhaps because we haven't got the confirmation, there might be genes from some of these archaic people coming through to the present-day.

TONY JONES: Let me ask you one final question if I can.

If it is finally discovered there are ancient remnants within our own genes of Neanderthal people and perhaps other ancient people, will that somehow change our nature?

CHRIS STRINGER: I think it would -- no, not necessarily because I think the Neanderthals actually are quite advanced people.

They certainly weren't the backward primitive caveman they've been sometimes portrayed as.

It would be an interesting finding if discovered to be so.

I think it would give us a different perspective, but I still feel that the majority of the evidence favours the idea that we are basically under the skin all Africans and we did have a recent African origin.

TONY JONES: Chris Stringer, we'll have to leave it there.

Thanks for joining us though.

It's been very interesting.


Thank you very much.

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