‘It’s always been some white dude’: how Ethiopia became the world leader in uncovering the story of humankind

The fossilised remains of ‘Selam’, a 3.3m-year-old Australopithecus afarensis child, which were discovered by Zeresenay Alemseged, who began his career as a young geologist with the National Museum of Ethiopia’s laboratory. It is the most complete skeleton of a human ancestor yet found Photograph: Fred Harter

When Berhane Asfaw was in California beginning his graduate studies into the origins of humanity, he realised all the fossils he was examining had come, like himself, from Ethiopia. They had been shipped to the US to be researched and pieced together.

Back then, in the early 1980s, the only Ethiopians working on archaeological digs in their own country were labourers, employed by foreigners.