Kenya

It takes a large team to dig for human origins at Olorgesailie. This field crew from 2007 is made up of Smithsonian, Kenyan, and other international scientists and excavators, some of whom have been working together for many years.

Sorrel Hays

A stone handaxe made by Homo erectus between about 1 million and 750,000 years ago was probably used for animal butchery, woodworking, or digging up roots and tubers.

Photo by Jim DiLoreto and Don Hurlbert, courtesy of Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

The excavation team at Olorgesailie finds multiple layers of handaxes and other ancient artifacts, indicating where early humans were making, using, and discarding their tools.

Photo by Jim DiLoreto and Don Hurlbert, courtesy of Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

At the floor of the Great Rift Valley is Olorgesailie, a geological formation just forty miles southwest of Nairobi. A team of Kenyan and Smithsonian archeologists dig regularly in Olorgesailie’s sediments that date back about 1.2 million years, looking for fossil traces of early humans, the stone tools they made, and the bones of ancient animals that lived alongside them.

Olorgesailie preserves some of the earliest signs of human innovation, like Middle Stone Age tools dating back around 300,000 years, even before fossil evidence of the evolution of our species. A recent focus of Smithsonian-Kenya research has been the transition between Acheulean technology of the Early Stone Age (dominated by handaxes and usually associated with Homo erectus) and Middle Stone Age technology (dominated by smaller and more refined stone tools and usually associated with our species, Homo sapiens).

The work of uncovering prehistory in Kenya is truly an international collaboration. The Smithsonian-Kenya team includes expert excavators, car mechanics, and cooks—because it is important for the team to be well-fed in the field! Many of the Kenyan field technicians have been working with the project for over twenty years, and for some it is a proud family legacy—their fathers worked on this or other Kenyan prehistory projects. It is always a joyous occasion for the summer family reunion at Olorgesailie, where the team works, eats, and lives together under the starry Kenyan night sky.

To discover and learn more, visit the Hall of Human Origins inside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

Text provided by National Museum of Natural History

Paleontologist Fredrick Kyalo Manthi talks with Festival visitors about the research at a dig site in Olorgesailie, Kenya. His research broadly focuses on human evolution and environments inhabited by distant human ancestors.

Photo by Brian Barger, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution

Joshua Nzioki Mativo teaches young Festival visitors the art of discovering, identifying, and caring for fossils.

Photo by Benita Mayo, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution

Joshua Nzioki Mativo works with a young excavator to make a new archaeological discovery.

Photo by Pruitt Allen, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution

Musyoka Kilonzi Mwangangi passes on his knowledge of fossils to a group of young visitors.

Photo by Bea Ugolini, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution

Rick Potts, director of the Human Origins Program at the National Museum of Natural History, talks to Festival visitors about Turkana Boy, a Homo erectus skeleton (KNM-WT 15000) dating to about 1.6 million years ago. Turkana Boy is the most complete early human skeleton discovered, found in Nariokotome, West Turkana, Kenya. This cast of the skeleton was created for the Folklife Festival.

Photo by Bea Ugolini, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution

Visitors got a taste of what it means to be Kenyan, and in the Human Origins area of the program they got to respond to the more universal question: what does it mean to be human? Photo by Akea Brown, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution