Mungo Man and Mungo Lady, Australia's oldest known people, came home after decades in Canberra, and their reburial split the three nations who own them

In 1968 geologist Jim Bowler found burnt bones on the dry bed of Lake Mungo. They were a woman, later called Mungo Lady, and the oldest known evidence of human cremation. In 1974 a man, Mungo Man, was found nearby. Both are about 42,000 years old, the oldest human remains found in Australia. They and 106 other ancestral remains were taken to the Australian National University without permission from the three Traditional Owner groups: Mutthi Mutthi, Barkindji (Paakantyi) and Ngiyampaa. Mungo Lady came back in 1992. Mungo Man came home with a ceremony in November 2017. The owners split. Some wanted a keeping place where the dead could be visited and studied; others wanted reburial. In 2018 New South Wales agreed to rebury them all, and the keeping-place plan was dropped for lack of money. In April 2022 federal minister Sussan Ley approved reburial at 26 unmarked sites. Barkindji man Michael Young said the Barkindji, who hold native title over 80 percent of that land, were not consulted. Mungo Lady and Mungo Man were buried on 24 May 2022 despite a last-minute court challenge; Heritage NSW said the state did not authorise or conduct that burial^†. Mutthi Mutthi man Jason Kelly called it a desecration. On 28 March 2025 Federal Court Justice Melissa Perry dismissed Kelly's bid to halt the reburials and ordered him to pay $10,000 costs. The graves are unmarked.