Paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson takes us back to the beginning to the site where he discovered Lucy, the 3.2 million-year-old hominid skeleton. We designed and hosted the trip earlier this year for the 50th anniversary of the discovery of Lucy for the Institute of Human Origins. Here, Don beautifully describes the power of such a journey and how to visit the homelands of early humanity is to time travel.
They say that travelling expands the mind, but for a paleoanthropologist like me, travelling back in time is the real mind-blower. When you visit places where our most ancient ancestors lived, you can’t help feeling a deep and profound connection to your roots; you find yourself marvelling that they developed language, made tools, and created art.
In 1974, I discovered the 3.2-million-year-old skeleton known as Lucy. Although she walked upright, like us, she was more apelike. She possessed a small brain, a jutting apelike face, and primitive features in her teeth and jaw. She was small in stature, only about three and a half feet tall. Lacking the skills we associate with being human, such as using weapons, controlling fire, or building shelter, her kind lived under the constant threat of predators ancestral to our modern-day lions, cheetahs, and hyenas. Their world was a dangerous place. And yet, her species, Australopithecus afarensis, survived for nearly a million years – that’s almost four times as long as our species, Homo sapiens. Lucy’s species occupies a pivotal place on the human family tree as the last common ancestor, at around 3 million years ago, to all later humans, not just those that went extinct, but those that led to modern-day humans. There is no longer any question that Africa is the cradle of humankind.
Like all of our earliest ancestors, Lucy was part of the natural world. She probably woke with the sun, breathed in the fresh air, drank water from a lake, felt the soft savannah grass under her feet with every step. She lived in groups, and probably foraged in groups, subsisting predominantly on a vegetarian diet. Thus far, no stone tools have been found in association with her species, remains of which have been found in Chad, Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia.
In January of this year, as part of the 50th anniversary celebration of Lucy’s discovery, Journeys by Design and I co-led a group on a tour of significant fossil sites. In the museum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, curators allowed us to see the actual Lucy skeleton. I never get tired of watching the reaction of people who have this incredible opportunity to see her; I have actually seen people shed tears, feeling a powerful connection to this small, ancient creature. From there, we travelled to the Afar Triangle, and the group got to stand in the exact spot where she was found. In silence, they looked around – at the ground where I’d seen the first piece, her elbow, then up the slope, where the rest of her remains were found. It was about 110 degrees, but no one seemed to mind. It was a magical moment, and I was honoured to be able to share it with them.
An African safari will change you. It will unite you with your past and provide you with a more complete understanding of how humans came to be, and how vital it is for us to ponder the future of our species and our planet.
© Institute of Human Origins
© Jack Daulton
As part of the Lucy 50 celebration, Donald Johanson will be in conversation with New York Times columnist and author Carl Zimmer on the last 50 years of discoveries of our origins on Earth. Visit this link for more information on the event.
If you’d like to discuss travel in Ethiopia, please get in touch with Will or a member of our exploration team. While it can prove difficult with the unrest, a trip to many of this country’s extraordinary landscapes is very much possible with the right planning and team on the ground.