Laetoli: the footsteps of Lucy's parents
En el camino del Ngorongoro al Serengeti Wilson nos habla de un yacimiento, Laetoli, donde se descubrieron las primeras huellas de pisadas humanas en el planeta. ¿Si os parece podemos parar?, question. Y una hora después estábamos entrando en una llanura de polvo seco donde cuesta imaginar que hubiera y haya vida. El calor es fuerte.
El yacimiento de Laetoli, a 45 kilómetros de la garganta de Olduvai, es uno de esos inicios de todo que hay en África. Todos somos africanos, todos venimos de aquí y hasta aquí hay que venir para encontrar a nuestros ancestros. En esta parte del valle del Rift, la antropóloga británica Mary Leaky, que llevaba años trabajando en este yacimiento junto a su marido Louis (fallecido años antes), descubrió en 1976 which are the footprints on the planet of the first hominids to walk on two legs.
A couple, perhaps with a baby she, who walked peacefully to a trough
Dating back 3,6 million years. The studies speak of a couple, perhaps with a baby she, that "walked calmly up to a trough", We explain. rain trajectory retained by a layer extensive released by a volcano ash then solidified.
The importance of the discovery, besides by date, is that raises questions about how it was the development of man. One theory is that brain growth was prompting the advancement and one that was walking on two feet and allow working with your hands. Laetoli is positioned with the second, since they are a million years before the first verified widening skulls brain and the emergence of tools.
Lucy data de 3,2 million years, so these traces could be from their parents
The fascinating thing is that those prints belong to a "Australopithecus afarensis", the same to which the mother of all hitherto, Lucy Ethiopian, baptized with that name because scientists who discovered listened to "Lucy in the sky with diamonds", The Beatles (luckily I did not discover, because in my case there would be dozens of fossils called Manolo Garcia). Lucy data de 3,2 million years, so these traces could be from their parents in the process of immigration that took them around the Rift Valley.
Then, at Laetoli, in the small interpretive center, there is a sympathetic and generous tribute to a Japanese, Yoshiharu Sekino. An anthropologist, Dr. and traveler, in the immense sense of the word, one day he got up and decided to take a little bike ride that lasted 2990 days and crossed 35 countries around the globe. The tribute is because in Patagonia decided to start and finish here, at Laetoli, origin of humanity that was the point of your route. In a glass case is the bicycle he used and more than worn sneakers. I looked at the map and could not feel more than a healthy envy and admiration for this man, for freedom to imagine and make.
One day he got up and decided to take a little bike ride that lasted 2990 days and crossed 35 countries around the globe
It's also nice to see the love and respect with which it comes to marriage Leaky, they had to convince the Masai, support them in the project. She returned for the last time in 1996, three months before he died, to meet with old friends and see his work Tanzanians. There are pictures of them with them, of your search, of his work.
I guess this place is outside the major tourist routes of the parks, but everything here has a special energy. I remember last image I found a gift. Looking out over the valley in which a rock part from the center of nowhere, I saw in the distance walking on the sidewalk of a dry road a lone Maasai. He walked in the midst of the dryness and heat to nowhere. Perfect metaphor for this place. Something so did the parents of all makes 3,6 million years.
Comments (2)
Lydia
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Very interesting what you say about the anthropologist Mary Leakey and beautiful history Yoshiharu Sekino.
I laughed a lot with fossils that could have been called Manolo Garcia.
The end of history, magnificent.
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Celia
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Very interesting.
Jajaja
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