I’ve just returned from Atlanta, where around 50 scientists from the US, Canada, UK, Europe and Africa came together to discuss progress on our project, the Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project. In short, we are analysing the ancient sediments from five lakes in Ethiopia and Kenya, close to places where anthropologists have discovered the remains of ancient Homo sapiens (our species) or our ancestor species. Combined, the sediments from all the sites span the time from close to the present day to millions of years ago. By analysing the changes in the chemistry of the lake sediments, and how this changes back through time, we are trying to establish how climate change may have contributed to the biological evolution of humans and cultural changes such as migrations out of Africa.
|Some of the scientists working on the five lakes|
|A bit of sight-seeing in Atlanta |
Martin Luther King's House