Lake Mungo remains that LM3 can not be older than 50,000 years BP. According to anthropologist Peter Brown, with the absence of the original deposit that once lay above the burial, a minimum age for the burial has not been established, only a possible maximum. In 2003, Professor Bowler led a project bringing together a multi-disciplinary team of Australian expert groups (comprising four Australian universities, the NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service and the CSIRO, as well as including descendants of the Mungo people) to collaborate on a final determination of the skeleton's age. They reached a consensus that LM3 is about 40,000
Lake Mungo inhabited. If it was inhabited 60 thousand years or over, it puts in question the theory that all civilizations derived from Africa. If, however, Mungo Man and Mungo Lady truly are evidence that Australia has only been inhabited for about 50,000 years, the theory of Africa is stronger than ever. This would put Mungo Man and Mungo Lady's civilization in the same time frame as other cultures that were just beginning to settle outside of Africa. The discovery of these remains is important to Archaeology because we discover the beginnings of cremation as a burial ritual and in addition we