(101 things to know when you go) ON SAFARI IN AFRICA. Patrick Brakspear
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who value getting closer to nature and being in the great outdoors, Africa is something special, something quite unique.
Africa combines the richness of its wildlife, its peerless landscapes and distinctive cultures with the added spice of adventure!
“All I wanted to do now was get back to Africa. We had not left it, yet, but when I would wake in the night I would lie, listening, homesick for it already.” - Ernest Hemingway, Green Hills of Africa
Africa - looking back
All of the available scientific evidence supports the notion that Africa was the continent in which human life began - the cradle of mankind. It is in Africa that the oldest fossils of our earliest ancestors have been found, and the only continent that shows evidence of humans through each of the key stages of evolution.
Archaeological significance
“Once, we believed that our species represented the pinnacle of evolution. But now we are beginning to accept that this is not true. Scientists have discovered a pattern of mass extinctions in the fossil record dating back to the beginning of life on Earth. So far, there have been five mass extinctions on this planet where some 65 per cent of all species became extinct in a brief geological instant. In one instance, about 225 million years ago, more than 95 per cent of marine animal species vanished. All life, past and present, is an accident of fate shaped by many forces, some chaotic, some random. Chance and change lie at the very heart of our own existence.” - Wild Africa, BBC Series.
A number of important and noteworthy archaeological sites relating to Early Man and Early Civilisations are to be found in Africa.
Early Man
The three most significant archaeological sites relating to early Man are to be found at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, Hadar in Ethiopia and the Sterkfontein Caves in South Africa:
Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania
Olduvai Gorge is a steep-sided ravine in the Great Rift Valley bordering the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. It is one of the most important prehistoric sites in the world and has been instrumental in furthering understanding of early human evolution. Excavation work there was pioneered by Louis and Mary Leakey in the 1950s and is continued today by their family. It is thought that millions of years ago the site was that of a large lake, the shores of which were covered with successive deposits of volcanic ash. Fossil remains of human ancestors have been found from as long as 2.5 million years ago. They are not of modern humans but primitive hominid forms of Paranthropus boisei and the first discovered specimens of Homo habilis. Artifacts of Homo erectus, dating back 1.5 million years, have also been located here together with fossil bones with Neanderthal characteristics from around 600,000 years ago. The Olduvai Gorge bears the distinction of having earliest human skull in the world; Zinjanthropus, commonly known as 'Nutcracker Man', and the oldest known evidence of mammoth consumption attributed to Homo erectus, around 1.8 million years ago.
The name Olduvai originated from a European misspelling of Oldupai, the correct Maasai word for the wild sisal plant growing in abundance in the gorge. There is a museum on site where visitors can listen to lectures and see visual representation of the discoveries made in the region. Some 45 km south of Olduvai Gorge a series of hominid footprints, known as the Laetoli prints, can be found. For the present, the site has been closed so as to preserve the prints, but reproductions of them can be seen at the Olduvai Museum. Discovered in 1972, the 3.7 million year-old footprints are thought to be those of a family group who were fleeing from an erupting volcano. Imprinted in the volcanic ash spewing from the volcano, the prints, which run for about 100 meters, seem to suggest the presence of two adults and a child. Judging by the balance of weight on the prints, experts have deduced that the child turned back to look over its shoulder, perhaps at the volcano, but that one of the adults also turned back to urge the child forward and away from the approaching danger. Poignant and eerily immediate, this touching family moment has been frozen in time; a snapshot of our earliest relatives Homo habilis (handy man) Homo erectus (standing man) and Homo sapiens (wise man).
‘Lucy’ & ‘Ardi’ – Hadar, Ethiopia
Hadar in Ethiopia is the archaeological site best known for the discovery of Lucy, a three million year old fossilised specimen of Australopithecus afarensis discovered by the archaeologist Donald Johanson in 1974. He decided to nickname her "Lucy" after listening (repeatedly) to the song by the Beatles “Lucy in the sky with diamonds” while celebrating the discovery. Lucy was only 1.1m (3 feet 8 inches) tall, weighed 29 kilograms (65 lb) and looked somewhat like a chimpanzee. But although the creature had a small brain, the pelvis and leg bones appeared to have had an identical function as those of modern humans, showing with certainty that these hominids had walked erect. Australopithecus afarensis was at the time placed as the last ancestor common to humans and chimpanzees, living from 3.9 to 3 million years ago. Although fossils closer to the chimpanzee line have been recovered since the early 1970s, Lucy remains a treasure among anthropologists studying human origins.
After 17 years of research, a team of scientists led by Tim D. White from the University of California, Berkeley, published a comprehensive analysis of a prehuman hominid called Ardi in October 2009. Painstakingly pieced together from more than 100 crushed fossil fragments unearthed in Ethiopia, this female specimen of Ardipithecus ramidus (Ardi, for short) lived 4.4 million years ago. A more complete set of remains than the Australopithecus Lucy, Ardi is the oldest skeleton of a prehuman hominid ever found. With her long, elegant fingers, 4ft. frame and a head no larger than a bonobo's, Ardi was surprisingly ‘unchimplike’ despite being the earliest known descendant of the last common ancestor shared by humans and chimps. Also, she was capable of walking on two feet despite living in an area of woodland and forest — a finding that downplays the importance of open grasslands to the evolution of human bipedalism. The word Ardi means "ground floor" and the word ramid means "root" in the Afar language of the region.
‘Little foot’ & ‘Mrs Ples’ - Sterkfontein, South Africa
Inside the Sterkfontein Caves, just 45 minutes from Johannesburg in South Africa, were discovered the much celebrated bones of ‘Little Foot’, a nearly intact skeleton of an Australopithecus africanus – hominids believed to be the immediate predecessors of the genus Homo, to which we Homo sapiens belong. Little Foot is dated at 4 million years old; and another fossil found at the site, ‘Mrs. Ples’, is dated at 3.5 million years. This makes them the oldest Hominid bones ever found by paleontologists. It is this site, and that at Olduvai in Tanzania, that prompts many scientists to call Africa the “Cradle of Humankind” – the place where our ancestors evolved.
‘Little Foot’ was short and walked upright, had a small brain and small canines, and was thought to be primarily a vegetarian. As Hominids evolved over the millennia, their height and brain size increased; they began to make tools to hunt animals for meat; develop the means to control fire, and gain the capacity to speak. We humans – Homo sapiens – appeared on the scene only about 30,000 years ago, a mere fraction of the age of ‘Little Foot’.
In terms of our ability to trace and understand our origins, Sterkfontein is of monumental importance.
Turkana Boy
In 1984 the fossilized skeleton of an 11 or 12 year boy was discovered by Kamoya Kimeau, a member of one of Richard Leakey's research teams, at the site of Nariokotome, in western Lake Turkana, Kenya. This specimen, comprising 108 bones, is the most complete early human skeleton ever found, and is believed to be between 1.5 and 1.6 million years old.
In adulthood, Turkana Boy might have reached 185 centimetres (73 in) tall and massed 68 kilograms (150 lb). The pelvis is narrower than in Homo sapiens, which is most likely for more efficient upright walking. This further indicates a fully terrestrial bipedalism, which is unlike older hominid species that show a combined feature