The centuries-old skull of a white man found in Australia is
raising questions about whether Captain James Cook really was the
first European to land on the country's east
coast.
The skull was found in northern New South Wales in late 2011, and
police initially prepared themselves for a gruesome murder
investigation.
But scientific testing revealed that not only was it much older
than expected, but possibly belonged to a white man born around
1650, well before Englishman Cook reached the eastern seaboard on
the Endeavour in 1770.
"The DNA determined the skull was a male," Detective Sergeant John
Williamson told The Daily Telegraph.
"And the anthropologist report states the skull is that
of a Caucasoid aged anywhere from 28 to 65."
Australian National University expert Stewart Fallon, who
carbon-dated the skull, pulling some collagen from the
bone as well as the enamel on a tooth, said he was at first shocked
at the age of the relic.
"We didn't know how old this one was, we assumed at first that it
was going to be a very young sample," he told AFP.
"When we first did it we weren't really thinking about people
coming to Australia and things like until we started to look at the
dates and say, 'Oh, that's becoming intriguing'."
He said the test used was quite accurate for dates after 1950 but
for earlier samples it was more difficult, and the two samples
yielded different dates—though both were within the error
range.
"Using them (the dates) together we can do some modelling as to
what we expect the calendar age to be ... and the way it works out
by using those two dates is that we get about an 80 percent
probability that the person was born somewhere around the 1650s and
died somewhere between 1660 and 1700," Fallon said.
He said there was a 20 percent probability the skull, which was
found well-preserved and intact but without any other remains near
the Manning River, belonged to someone born between 1780 to 1790
who died between 1805 and 1810.
Historians were cautious.
"Before we rewrite the history of European settlement we have to
consider a number of issues, particularly the circumstances of the
discovery," archaeologist Adam Ford told the Telegraph.
"The fact the skull is in good condition and found alone could
easily point to it coming from a private collection and skulls were
very popular with collectors in the 19th century."
Cassie Mercer, editor of Australia And New Zealand Inside History,
said the skull "could be an incredible find".
"I guess it's a very exciting find because it could open up a whole
lot of avenues of history that we haven't been able to explore
before," she told AFP.
Dutch explorers made the earliest European landings in Cape York in
Australia's far north and western Australia in the 1600s.