On November 24 1974, renowned American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson spotted “a piece of elbow with humanlike anatomy” poking out of a rocky hillside in northern Ethiopia. It was the first fossil of a partial skeleton belonging to “Lucy”, an ancient female hominin who took the story of human evolution back beyond 3 million years for the first time.
This autumn also marks the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the “Taung child”, a fossilised skull in South Africa that was key in our understanding that ancient humans first evolved in Africa – something we now take for granted.
Yet, despite largely centring on the African continent as the “cradle of mankind”, the narrative of hominin fossil discovery is striking for its lack of African scientists. In this week’s episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, and in a Q&A for our Insights series, leading Ethiopian paleoanthropologist Yohannes Haile-Selassie explains why the story of ancient human origins is so western-centric, and why this needs to change.
