What 65,000-year-old tools taught me about today

Professor Chris Clarkson was being interviewed by a documentary producer during a dig at Madjedbebe—on the lands of the Mirarr people in the Alligator Rivers region—when an excavator interrupted him. They’d found a stone tool.

But not just any stone tool. The kind that people were using in Africa and South Asia 65,000 years ago and, therefore, another piece in the puzzle of how and when humans first came to Australia from Africa.

That tool helped to rewrite history. Along with many other discoveries on the site, it showed that humans lived in Australia 65,000 years ago—far earlier than the 50,000 years previously thought.

As Chris takes up the role of Rock Art Australia (RAA) Professorial Chair in Rock Art and Archaeology at Griffith University, he's also joining the new Australian Research Centre of Excellence for Transforming Human Origins Research in a leadership role. Together, these appointments will see him delve ever deeper into the biggest questions of all: where and when modern humanity began.

“The past is still a mystery,” he says. “It’s only through working together with local Indigenous people and combining science with a variety of different cultural narratives that we can start to understand the richness of that human past and unlock those mysteries.”

Dig for victory

The Madjedbebe site was first discovered by archaeologists in the 1970s, where they found grindstones, stone tools and ochre. In the late 1980s, archaeologists Rhys Jones and Bert Roberts carried out further dating, establishing the site was much older than any others in Australia.

Over the following decades, debate continued about the accuracy of the dating. So Chris got together some colleagues, applied for funding and talked with the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation and the Mirarr people to see if there was interest in doing more research.

“We told them that could be a significant site for Australia but also for the world, to show that the Traditional Owners were doing very sophisticated things culturally, technologically and economically—as much, or more so, than what we find anywhere else in the world.”

The corporation agreed to back the project as an important way to get the message out that Madjedbebe and other sites are incredibly significant and should be protected.

Finding the evidence

The dig began in 2012, with a second season in 2015. As Chris and the team dug further, they hit a lower layer about two and a half metres down that held a collection of artifacts which they carefully retrieved—along with thousands and thousands of sand grains for testing.

“Sand grains work a little bit like batteries,” Chris explains. “When they’re exposed to sunlight, the battery goes completely flat and as it’s buried over time, it starts to absorb back an electron charge.” By measuring how much charge had built up over time and thus how long the grains were buried, the archaeology team was able to reconstruct the chronology of each layer.

These findings, lined up with charcoal dating from the burnt plant matter they found, led the researchers to determine the bottom layer was about 65,000 years old—which the Gundjheimi Aboriginal Corporation was delighted to report to the corporation.

Working in partnership

The ARC Centre of Excellence, led by Professor Michael Petraglia, and where Chris is a lead Chief Investigator, wants to change how the nature of how human evolution work is being done. “Rather than it being Western scientists coming in and saying: ‘We’re here to answer these questions—sign this piece of paper and away we go’, it's meant to be a true partnership,” says Clarkson.

When human remains were found at Madjedbebe, for example, Chris and his team had lengthy negotiations with the Mirarr Traditional Owners, who asked them to continue the excavation and return the remains of the Old People when it was over.

Alfred Nayinggul, Senior Traditional Owner for the Manilakarr Clan and Erre Clans in Western Arnhem Land, has been working with Chris on sites in his country, including Malangangerr, and agrees that working in partnership is vital.

“Working together was fine. Chris did a good thing for me, and I did a good thing for him.” And, he points out, the knowledge which the digs have revealed will help everyone.

“I learned about my culture, and I need to pass that knowledge on to the new generation and the whole world. Everyone should know.

“With climate change, I think it’s important that we know what our ancestors were going through—the wet season and dry season, and how they used to live and hunt. We need to know more from years past, and about what is happening now. It’s a big story to share with other communities.”

Hope for the future

Along with Nayinggul, the Njanjma Rangers and Manilakarr Clan, Chris is out at other sites excavating for evidence of long-term environmental change around the edge of National Heritage Draft Listed Red Lily Lagoon in Western Arnhem Land (Wulk).

This is part of a new ARC Linkage project partnering with RAA, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and the Northern Land Council.

But how can studying the people of 65,000 years ago help us face the future? “It’s about seeing how humans coped with change in the past,” says Clarkson. “We see how they came up with strategies to be resilient and to cope in the face of big changes and pressures on their societies and in their environments.

“If we don’t learn from those, then we run the risk of not being well equipped to deal with the challenges of the present and of the future.”

He paints a picture of the changing landscape people had to contend with in the Top End—from a drier Australia, where huge marsupials roamed, to when the ocean came rushing in as the glaciers melted before gradually receding. Through it all, our species was resilient.

“Throughout that period of dramatic climate change—which we find daunting today—people adapted to it. It really tells us that with the right solutions and the right approaches, you can adapt to almost anything.”

Image captions (top to bottom):

Chris Clarkson at a dig.
Linkage grant with Manilikarr Clan, Njanjma Rangers, Rock Art Australia and Northern Land Council partners. Taking subsurface samples at Liang Bangkai, South Kalimantan.
Linkage grant with Manilikarr Clan, Njanjma Rangers, Rock Art Australia and Northern Land Council partners. Taking subsurface samples at Gua Batu, South Kalimantan.
Archaeological research in South Kalimantan, Borneo, with Indonesia's Archaeometry researchers from BRIN. L-R: Restu, Nia, Kasih, Chris and Anton. Chris and Dr Kasih Norman (pictured above) and a team from Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) are also exploring human responses to long-term climate change in neighbouring Indonesia, with a recent field trip to southern Borneo investigating the age and depth of the region’s limestone caves.

Published 24 September 2026

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