Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
African archaeology
Summary
Africa has the longest record of human habitation in the world. The first hominins emerged 6-7 million years ago, and among the earliest anatomically modern human skulls found so far were discovered at Omo Kibish, Jebel Irhoud, and Florisbad.
European archaeology, as well as that of North Africa, is generally divided into the Stone Age (comprising the Lower Paleolithic, the Middle Paleolithic, the Upper Paleolithic, the Mesolithic, and the Neolithic), the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. For Africa south of the Sahara, African archaeology is classified in a slightly different way, with the Paleolithic generally divided into the Early Stone Age, the Middle Stone Age, and the Later Stone Age. After these three stages come the Pastoral Neolithic, the Iron Age and then later historical periods.
Africa's prehistory has been largely ignored, with the exception of research into early human evolution. However, it is overseen by the PanAfrican Archaeological Association, whose members consist of professional archaeologists from all over Africa.
The Early Stone Age (ESA), which spanned from approximately 2.6 million years ago (mya) - 280,000 years ago (ya), describes a period in African prehistory in which the first stone tools were developed, including both Oldowan and Acheulean. Early sites along the East African Rift include Lomekwi in the Turkana Basin, Kenya, and Olduvai Gorge farther south in modern-day Tanzania. The earliest hominids were discovered in Ethiopia and titled Ardipithecus ramidus. The diverging species of hominin are known as australopithecines and were first discovered in Olduvai. Australopithecines and their fossils include Paranthropus boisei, the most famous being nicknamed "Zinj" or "Nutcracker man" by Mary Leakey, the archaeologist who found it. Another older, famous australopithecine, related to those found at Olduvai Gorge but found approximately 2000 kilometers to the north east in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia, is Lucy, who was discovered by Donald Johanson and his team in 1974.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.