Abstract: Recent discoveries relating to the presence of Homo erectus in Java during the late Pleistocene are summarised. The implications of their presence in relation to the settlement of Australia are explored. A description of Kow Swamp and a brief history of the 'archaic' human fossils discovered there are presented. Relevance to the present day legend of the 'Yowie' is touched upon.

INTRODUCTION:
Since the dawn of recorded history, a legend has persisted of a wild and hairy man who haunts the forests at the fringes of human habitation. The well known Epic of Gilgamesh, which derives ultimately from ancient Sumeria, tells, in part, the story of the King of Uruk and Enkidu, the  "hairy man" who lurked with wild beasts,  innocent of human society, who became a friend and brother to the King(1a).

The archaeologist Myra Shackley(1b) gives a history of the Wild Man tradition as it has been passed on through the last 5000 years. It is notable that these alleged wild men were regarded as people, not animals, by the folk who told and retold the tale. Indeed, the story of Gilgamesh begins with the woman who welcomes Enkidu into the company of the human race:

Oh Enkidu, when I look upon thee, thou art become like a God. Why dost thou yearn to run wild again with the beasts of the field? Get up from the ground, I say, the bed of a shepherd.(1a)

It is true that classification systems thousands of years ago bore little relationship to modern, scientific binomial nomenclature. But millennia before the Latin language had ever been heard in the world, a clear distinction in men's minds had already been made between that which was of humanity and that which was of the dumb brutes of the Earth :

'And God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness: and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, andover the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the Earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the Earth."' Genesis 1:26

It is easy to dismiss the legend of the Wild Men as a kind of mental virus, an aberration of the mind which propagates from generation to generation, from country to country, serving no purpose but to spread itself wherever human feet may tread. Yet even where modern, technological humanity settled a new land, where a new beginning was to be made, where the native people were quickly dispossessed and decimated, their beliefs and legends despised and ignored, even in such a land, the legend grows anew. One such country is Australia.

Accounts persistently trickle in from members of the public who claim to have seen a large, hairy, usually black, anthropoid figure lurking in Australian forests. There is an remarkable similarity to the Bigfoot legend in North America and to the mysterious Yeti of the Himalayas. But in Australia the only primates ever to penetrate were of the genus Homo.

Conforming to the Australian tradition of bestowing ridiculous names upon the unfamiliar, the antipodean Wild Man has come to be called the "Yowie".

In the course of operating a web-site devoted to a cryptozoological project(2), one hears stories of many an odd and unusual thing. Here is one eye witness' email account of a close encounter with an Australian "Yowie":

Date: Wed, 02 Dec 1998
From: "steve ****" <****>

Steve:The story goes like this.
It was school holidays and I was in year 7 at B****n High School. Anthony **** (can vouch for the yowie) and I went camping down by a tributary of the Kalang river at **** about **km South west of B****n in NSW. We set up camp on his father's property which is surrounded by state forest.  As dark was nearing we could hear something moving around the camp.  Thinking it was only a large Lace Monitor (lizard) we set our camp fire alight and the "Lizard" could be heard moving away.  After several campfire stories about yowies, brown jacks, vampires in gum trees, and swimming creatures with red eyes we bed down with his dog(Kelpy cross German short hair). The moon was bright and you could see quite well. I later awoke to a scream and an elbow in the stomach and arose to see a large hairy big lower jawed creature staring at us through the opening of our tent(tarp draped over an A-frame at each end) the dog was going insane. Anthony was screaming and I just froze. It took off with the dog in hot pursuit only to hear a yelp and the dogcame sceaming back and frightened us again. We did not sleep much forthe rest of the night.

Ian: Would you say it was an ape-type of creature or maybe a bear or something else entirely? Did you happen to see its teeth - ie., did it have prominent canines?

Steve: More like a man, sorry did not see any teeth or eyes on the large jaw which was wider than its head. It ran more like a large slow man. It was hard to see in the dark and it was 11 years ago so it's hard to remember. A brown Jack is a sort of yowie only 4 feet tall and is said to be able to hypnotise you(freeze with fear?) if you look at its eyes and is more bold, often approaching people around camp fires to steal food. Got this info from a Koori elder of the Gubayinger(think that's right) tribe of Kempsey area (NSW).

Similar tales come to light with surprising frequency. The main geographical area involved seems to be the mountains of southern Queensland, New SouthWales and north eastern Victoria. The interested reader is referred to the informative and well researched account of the phenomenon presented by the authors Healy & Cropper(3).

EVIDENCES FOR THE "WILD MEN"?
Two hundred years ago, science banished the supernatural to the hag ridden mists of an ignorant and credulous past. Science would hold that if such creatures exist in the world, there must be a breeding population of them, they must be of flesh and blood, they must eat and sleep, they must leave traces in their wake, footprints in the sand even as our own ancestors did 3 million years ago at Laetoli(4). They must be mortal like us and so must leave their bones in the soil of the Earth.

So, where are their bones? Palaeontologists have scoured our planet in search of past life forms and none has attracted more interest than our own ancestors. But our ape-like forebears lived long ago. The creatures made famous by discoveries in Africa, Australopithecus, Homo habilis, Paranthropus and others, are long since departed from the face of the Earth.

The first of humanity's forebears to leave the African continent appears to have been Homo erectus. This species spread from Africa throughout Asia, penetrating into what are now the islands of Indonesia(5).

One  fossil site of H. erectus is Ngandong on the island of Java. A recent re-evaluation of the dates of the Ngandong fossils(6) places their age at between 53,000 to 27,000 ybp. That is to say, H. erectus may have been living in Java a mere 30,000 ybp. Such a date is long after the time when modern humanity, Homo sapiens sapiens, had arisen in Africa(7) and migrated around the globe, including even to the Australian continent(8). Thus, the evidence from Ngandong clearly indicates that populations of H. sapiens sapiens and H. erectus overlapped in time. (For convenience, I shall refer to our own species, Homo sapiens sapiens merely as H. sapiens from this point.)

As the Australian mainland has always been isolated by the sea from southeast Asia, the  marsupial fauna unique to Australia  has evolved independently since late Mesozoic times(9). There is a sharp divide known as the Wallace Line which separates Australasian fauna from their Asian counterparts(10).

Since H. sapiens obviously did cross the Wallace Line into Australia, they must therefore have done so by boat. Could H. erectus have done the same? The island of Flores lies between Bali and Timor. It has been separated from neighbouring Java by the sea for millions of years(11). Even at the height of the ice age, when sea levels were at their lowest, the nearest land lay across at least 19 km of sea. Yet artefacts attributed to H. erectus have been found on that island(12). The layer of volcanic ash in which the artefacts were discovered has been dated to about 800,000 ybp. It is thought that the embedded artefacts are of the same age(13). This fact indicates that Homo erectus, like Homo sapiens, was capable of navigating open stretches of water. When the sea fell to its lowest level during the Ice Age, the shoreline of Australia was coincident, more or less, with the edge of its continental shelf(14). This extends as far as the present island of Timor. If H. erectus people could reach Flores, presumably they could also attain Timor and hence Australia.

Whether they did so long before H. sapiens or at about the same time is unknown. Although prior residence in Java from around 800,000 ybp would appear to give them something of a head start, they may have been capable of crossing only relatively short stretches of open water, of the order of scores of kilometres rather than hundreds. Thus they may have been obliged to wait until declining sea levels narrowed the gap somewhat. As navigation over oceanic distances requires something more sophisticated than a bark canoe, it seems likely that H. sapiens themselves may have been similarly restricted. Thus it is possible that both H. sapiens and H. erectus made the jump to Australia at about the same time. That is to say, sometime between 30,000 to 100,000 ybp.

Is there any evidence that Australia was colonised by two distinct forms of humanity?

Palaeontological discoveries in south east Australia have long indicated the coexistence of two distinct populations of prehistoric humans. On the one hand, there were gracile morphologically "modern"  types typified by crania recovered from Green Gully(15), Dry Creek at Keilor(16), from Roonka(17) and from numerous locations in the Murray River basin in northern Victoria(18).

But then there are the robust "archaic" types whose cranial features are suggestive of  H. erectus. They are typified by finds from Cohuna(19), Mossgiel(20), Bourke's Bridge(21), Gunbower(22), Kow Swamp(23) and Talgai(24). The reason for the existence of these morphologically distinct groups has been the subject of much speculation and controversy. The two basic viewpoints have been summarised succinctly by Jones(25):

"Either there were two populations, an ancient archaic one being added to or partially replaced by a modern one which entered the continent sometime before 25,000 years ago, or the founding population itself showed marked polymorphism, perhaps due to hybridisation in the region of disembarkation."

The former scenario would require a pre-existing population of archaic type present in Australia from much earlier times. The second would  require such a group to accompany the first modern human settlers to Australia. Either scenario would seem to allow for interbreeding of the two types.

Could H. sapiens and H. erectus have interbred? Although they are considered to be distinct species, such a classification does not necessarily disbar the production of viable offspring(26). In any case, H. sapiens is thought to be the  species succeeding to H. erectus(27) or its close relatives. Whether evolutionary divergence would have made early H. sapiens reproductively incompatible with our immediate ancestors is a question which, it may be, no one is at present able to answer. In relation to the matter, it may be pertinent to advert to the fact that some early H. sapiens appeared to show greater morphological variability than do modern H. sapiens populations(28).

In Australia there recently existed a population of H. sapiens who may have retained some characteristics of H. erectus and yet who evidently passed the "test of sympatry" by maintaining their distinctiveness while surrounded, for millennia, by "modern" H. sapiens. It is a scientific enigma which cries out for further investigation.

KOW SWAMP
Kow Swamp lies in northern Victoria near the town of Cohuna. It is an extensive body of fresh water, supporting large numbers of water fowl and thick marshes at its northern end. Farmland abuts the shores of the lake where willow and eucalyptus trees grow. The main farming activities appear to be cattle and piggeries. It seems likely that organic matter in the surface runoff from contiguous farms accounts for the high level of biodiversity which is apparent from a casual inspection of the lake. The lake surface is punctuated by large numbers of dead trees. It appears to be very shallow across the whole of its breadth. Sport fishing is a popular recreational activity around the lake's shores.

Water level is maintained by Taylor's Creek, which supplies water from the Murray River: The creek has been extensively reconstructed by irrigation earthworks. Water is drained from the swamp by means of irrigation channels at its western and northern sides and eventually returned to the Murray River.

In 1925, in the course of excavations for an irrigation channel, a cranium was unearthed near the northern end of Kow Swamp(29). The then "Geological Survey of Victoria" prepared a report on the antiquity of the site, the main points of which were that both the site and the cranium were "geologically recent". In the 1940s analysis of material from the site and from the cranium itself was carried out at Sydney University(30). That work centred on the migration of calcium carbonate in the soils at the excavation site. Preliminary results indicated that the original cranium and the fragments recovered later were of different origin. However, later work carried out in the late 1960s overturned that result and indicated the cranium and calvarial fragments were of about the same age and origin after all. A review of the original 1925 report supported the idea that the cranium may have been from a burial site and that the rest of the skeleton awaited discovery(31).

In 1962 a human burial site was uncovered on the north eastern shore of the lake. Some bones were despatched to the police at the city of Bendigo in central Victoria. After deciding that the remains were much too old to fall under their jurisdiction, the police lodged them with the Museum of Victoria. There they sat until 1967 when they were noticed by one A.G. Thorne who had come to the museum in order to begin cataloguing the human osteological collection(32). After a lengthy and clever bit of detective work, the original site of the 1962 discovery was relocated(33). This was designated as KS1. Further excavations were carried out from 1968 to 1973. Eventually a skeletal assemblage of more than 40 individuals was put together from three different sites(34).

The remains are notable on three counts. Firstly, the crania are characterised by a persistence of H. erectus traits in the frontal region(35). Secondly, they are of recent geological age, from approximately 13,000 to 9,000 ybp(36). Thirdly, the site appears to represent a burial ground(37). Although these people may have retained a certain archaic morphology, it seems they were not so primitive that they did not respect their dead.

It should be made clear that, while the crania appear to show H. erectus characteristics, they nevertheless have more in common with modern humans and are to be classified asH. sapiens(38). One author goes so far as to hold that the characteristics of the crania may have been produced by artificial deformation, a result of cultural practice(39). Other writers do not concur with this view, however(40). These people, and others, of comparable age, from sites around SE Australia can be described as physically large, around six to seven feet tall in some cases, of robust skeletal construction, having prominent brow ridges, low forehead, large teeth and prognathic jaw. A sagittal crest is evident in some individuals. Their neck and jaw muscles were powerful and well developed. They populated the Murray River basin up to comparatively recent times, living alongside populations of anatomically modern humans, evidently able to maintain their genetic distinctiveness.

The Kow Swamp site has revealed stone artefacts which may or may not be associated with them(42). This author recently travelled to Kow Swamp in order to inspect first hand the locations where remains and artefacts were found. Further details are available at the author's website(43).

CONCLUSION
It is not known if the people typified by the Kow Swamp remains were possessed of  skins which, like ours, were relatively naked. But if they were even moderately hirsute, how might a representative of  their kind be reported if encountered unexpectedly?

Might not such an individual subsequently be described as a very large hairy humanoid? As a classic "Yowie" in other words? But for such an encounter to occur, humans like the Kow Swamp people must have survived, must still be living, somewhere in the mountains of Eastern Australia. But that means we must postulate the existence of a "lost tribe" of archaic humans hidden somewhere on the Australian mainland.

The present author does not suggest that such a thing may in fact be the case. Everything depends upon the credence which one lends these ongoing reports of encounters with "wild men" or "Yowie" type figures. The author would suggest, however, that if the "wild man" legend has any physical substance behind it then the hypothesis of a surviving group of  archaic humans, possibly a product of hybridisation between H. sapiens and H. erectus, is one explanation which, at least in the Australian context, could plausibly account for the phenomenon.

Of course, such an astonishing scenario seems scarcely credible on the verge of the 21st century and it is necessary for the moment, therefore, to relegate the legend of the "Yowie" to the realm of myth.

LITERATURE CITED:
1/ (a) Epic of Gilgamesh, N.K. Sandars. Chap. 1: The Coming of Enkidu, Penguin 1960.
    (b)  Wildmen. Yeti, Sasquatch and the Neanderthal Enigma. Myra Shackley, Thames & Hudson, 1983.
2/ "The Quest for Thylacoleo", http://www.thylacoleo.com
3/ Out of the Shadows: Australia's Mystery Animals T. Healy & P. Cropper,
     Iron Bark Publishing, 1994, Sydney.
4/ Human ancestors walked tall, stayed cool. P. Wheeler, Natural History 102:65-67, 1993.
5(a) Dubois, E. Pithecanthropus erectus, eine Menschenahnliche Ubergangsform aus Java
        E. Batavia: Landesdrucherei, 1894
5(b) Dubois, E. The proto-Australian fossil man of Wadjak, Java.
        Koninklijke Academie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam B 23:1013-1051, 1922.
6/  Latest Homo rectus of Java: potential contemporaneity with H. sapiens in Southeast Asia.
     C.C.Swisher III, W.J. Rink, S.C. Anton, H.P. Schwarz, G.H. Curtis, A. Suprijo & Widiasmoro.
     Science 274:1870-1874, 1996
7/  Genetic and fossil evidence for the origin of modern humans. C.B. Stringer & P.Andrews, Science 239:1263-68, 1988.
8/  (a) A 38,000 year old archaeological site at Upper Swan, Western Australia. R.H. Pearce & M. Barbetti,
           Arch. Oceania 16:173-178, 1981
      (b) Thermoluminescence dating of a 50,000 year old human occupation site in northern Australia.
             R.G. Roberts, R. Jones & M.A. Smith, Nature 345:153-156, 1990.
9/   Ch. 4, Palaeoclimatic Setting & Palaeogeographic Links of Australia in the Phanerozoic. L.A. Frakes & P. Vickers-
      Rich. Palaeoclimatic Setting & Palaeogeographic Links of Australia in the Phanerozoic.
     In Vertebrate Palaeontology of Australasia, by P.Vickers-Rich, J. M. Monaghan, R. F. Baird & T. H. Rich (eds.),
     pp 111-145. Pioneer Design Studio Pty. Ltd, in cooperation with the Monash University Publications Committee, Melbourne.
10/   ibid 9, pp. 136, 765, 767
11/ Fission-track ages of stone tools and fossils on the east Indonesian island of Flores.
       M.J. Morwood, P.B. O'Sullivan, F. Aziz, A.Raza, Nature c392, pp173-176, March 12,1998
12/   ibid. 11
13/   ibid. 11
14/ Palaeoecological changes in Victoria and Bass Strait as a backdrop for the marsupial megafauna and aboriginal
       colonization, Edmund D. Gill, The Artefact 3(2):67-75, 1978.
15/ The Green Gully Burial. D.A. Casey & T.A. Daragh,  Mem. Nat. Mus. Victoria, 30:3-13, 1970
16/ (a)The Keilor fossil skull: palate and upper dental arch. W. Adam, Mem. Nat. Museum Victoria., 13:71-77, 1943,
       (b)Provenance of the Keilor Cranium. E.D. Gill, Current Anthropology, 7:581-584, 1966,
       (c)The Physical Aspect of Man in Australia. N.W.G. MacIntosh. In R.M.Berndt & C.M. Berndt (eds): Aboriginal
             Man in Australia, Sydney:Halstead Press 1965,  pp 29-70
       (d)The Keilor Fossil Skull: anatomical description. J. Wunderley, Mem. Nat. Mus. Victoria 13:57-69, 1943
17/ Excavations at Roonka Station, lower River Murray, South Australia. J. Pretty,
       J. Anthrop. Soc. Sth. Aust., 9, supp:6-15,1971
18/ Attitudes of aboriginal skeletons excavated in the Murray Valley region between Mildura and  Renmark, Australia.
       Sir Robert Blackwood & K.N.G. Simpson, Mem. Nat. Mus. Victoria 34:99-150, 1973
      The palaeopathology of prehistoric Aboriginal skeletal remains excavated by the Victoria Archaeology Survey.
      M. Jurish & D. Davies, The Artefact, 1:194-218, 1976
      A note on the Murray Black collection of Australian Aboriginal skeletons. S. Sunderland & L.J.  Ray,
      Proc. R. Soc. Victoria 71:45-48, 1959
19/ The Cohuna Cranium Site - a re-appraisal. P.G. Macumber & R. Thorne, Arch. Phys. Anthrop. Oceania. 10:67-72, 1975
       See 29b
20/ (a) ibid 16c
20/(b) MacIntosh, N.W.G. Fossil Man in Australia. Australian Journal of Science 4:86-98, 1967
21/  Kow Swamp and Lake Mungo: towards an osteology of early man in Australia. A.G. Thorne, unpub. PhD thesis, Dept.
       of Anthrop. Sydney University1975
22/  ibid
23 /  (a) See 34a
        (b) Mungo and Kow Swamp: morphological variation in Pleistocene Australians. A.G. Thorne, Mankind 8:191-195,
              1971
        (c) ibid 19.
24/ Separation or Reconciliation? Biological clues to the development of Australian society.
      A.G. Thorne, 1977. In J. Allen, J. Golson &  R. Jones (eds): Sunda & Sahul, London:Academic Press pp 187-204.
25/ Emerging picture of Pleistocene Australians, R. Jones, Nature 246:278-281, 1973.
26/ Processes of Organic Evolution, ch. 5. G. Ledyard Stebbins, Prentice Hall 1966.
27/ The Fossil Trail. Ian Tattersall, Oxford University Press 1995, ch 17.
28/ The Stone age of Mount Carmel. T. McCowen & A. Keith, vol. 2, Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1939.
29/ (a) Aboriginal Man at Kow Swamp, Northern Victoria: the problem of locating the burial site of the KS1 skeleton.
            A.L. West, The Artefact 2(1):19-30(1977)
       (b) The Cohuna Cranium: history & commentary from November 1925 to November 1951. N.W.G. Macintosh,
              Mankind 4(8):307-329,1952.
30/ ibid. 29a
31/ ibid. 29a
32/ ibid. 29a
33/ ibid. 29a
34/ ibid  29a
      (a) Preliminary comments on the Kow Swamp skeleton, A.G. Thorne, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies
            Newsletter 2:6-7,1969
      (b)  Discoveries of late Pleistocene Man at Kow Swamp, Australia. A.G. Thorne & P. Macumber,
             Nature 238:316-319,1972
35/ ibid 34b
36/ (a) Homo sapiens  in Southeast Asia and the Antipodes:archaeological versus biological interpretations.
             S. Bowdler. In T.Akazawa, K. Aoki & T.Kimura (eds):The Evolution and Dispersal of Modern Humans in Asia.
            Tokyo:Hokusen-sha, pp559-589, 1992
36/(b) Brown, P.  Coobool Creek. Terra Australis 13, 1989. Canberra, Australia: Department of Prehistory, Australian National University.
      (c) See also ref.  37.
37/ The Cohuna Cranium Site: a re-appraisal. P.G. Macumber & R. Thorne, Arch. & Phys. Anthrop. in Oceania,
        Vol X(1): 67-72, 1975.
38/ Pleistocene homogeneity and Holocene size reduction: the Australian human skeletal evidence. P. Brown,
       Arch. in Oceania 22:41-71, 1987.
39/ Possible evidence of a cultural practice affecting head growth in some late Pleistocene East Asian and Australasian
       populations. D. Brothwell, J. Arch. Science 2:75-77, 1975
40/ ibid 34b
41/ ibid 34b
42/ Stone Artefacts from Kow Swamp, with notes on their excavation and environmental context. R.V.S. Wright,
      Arch. & Phys. Anthrop. in Oceania Vol X (3):161-180, 1975.
43/ URL:-  http://www.thylacoleo.com
      NOTE: The author may be contacted via email : [email protected]