Afar Hominids, Ethiopia (1981)

Abstract

In early 1981 I join a team directed by Professor Desmond Clark to work in the middle Awash valley of the Afar desert , an area rich in fossil bones of extinct animals dating back to over four million years in age. We excavate Early Stone Age sites and possible butchery sites. Tim White identifies cut marks on the Bodo skull indicative of deliberate defleshing. This skull is about 0.5 million years old and transitional between Homo erectus and archaic Homo. We find fossil bones of probable Australopithecus afarensis several metres beneath a volcanic ash dated to 4 million years ago. I identify and sample the sediments from a lake that dried out 4 million years ago. The chief of the local Afar tribesmen explains that our lives are in danger but that he can ensure our safety, for a modest fee. I become convinced that the climate in this region was far less arid when Pliocene hominids roamed the plains over 2.5 million years ago.