Lake Mungo may have inspired Australians to reinvent boat use in the middle of the desert 24,000 years ago

Geologists and archaeologists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Germany), La Trobe University (Australia) and the University of Wollongong (Australia) identify previously unrecognised evidence for a "mega-lake" in the Australian desert 24,000 years ago, at the site of Lake Mungo in south-eastern Australia. This discovery holds significant implications for understanding past climate change. In addition, they present archaeological evidence which shows that people repeatedly visited an island stranded in the middle of the mega-lake. To this aim they likely reinvented boat use and came up with the idea rather quickly.