The Awash valley contains one of the most important groupings of palaeontological sites in Africa. The remains found at the site, the oldest of which date back at least 4 million years, provide evidence of human evolution which has modified our understanding of the history of humankind. The most spectacular discovery came in 1974, when 52 fragments of a skeleton enabled the famous "Lucy" to be reconstructed.
Did you know: Lucy was given the name because after discovering her, Donald Johanson and his crew were celebrating in camp and listening to the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".
Among Ethiopia's sites on the list of World Heritage Sites, UNESCO has made attempts to increase the awareness of the importance of the African human origin sites in Ethiopia. The aim is to conserve and protect the areas from deteriorating.
Excavations by an international team of palaeontologists and pre-historians between 1973 and 1980 found a large quantity of fossilised hominid and animal bones in a remarkable state of preservation, the most ancient of which were at least four million years old. In 1974, researchers found the most complete set of remains of a hominid skeleton, Australopithecus afarensis, nicknamed ‘Lucy’, dating back 3.2 million years. Afarensis has since been proved to be the ancestral origin for both the genus Australopithecus and Homo sapiens. The site has also yielded a female skeleton, nicknamed ‘Ardi,’ which is some 1.2 million years older than ‘Lucy’. It is thought that there could be a wealth of paleo-anthropological and pre-historic tools still awaiting discovery and scientific study.
