8 101 x Nearly 4 million years ago, shortly after a volcanic eruption which had scattered ash, a group of three hominids walked upright through the area now called Laetoli. Their footprints in the ash turned to stone and were uncovered in the 1970s: these revealed that they walked in the same way as modern humans.
# Laetoli, Footprint
9 101 x Fossil hunting always requires not only hard work and knowledge but also luck. The team working at Hadar in Ethiopia had more than their fair share, discovering superb fossils of a new species, Australopithecus afarensis: not the usual scraps of bone but almost half the skeleton of one, christened 'Lucy', and bones of many others.
# Hadar, Skull of Australopithecus afarensis
10 101 x Sites round Lake Turkana (Lake Rudolph) have produced very important finds. From Nariokotome came the almost complete skeleton of a H. erectus (or H. ergaster) youth; from Koobi Fora an early H. habilis skull, and from Lothagam a piece of jaw probably of an early Australopithecus, dated 5.5 million years ago, currently the earliest evidence of our lineage.
# Turkana
11 101 x The discovery here in 1924 of a tiny hominid child's skull was a milestone in the understanding of hominid evolution. Australopithecus africanus, to which species this fossil belonged, has moved in and out of the human family tree over the years: currently it is viewed by some scholars as an intermediate stage between A. afarensis and the genus Homo, whereas others reject this.
# Taung, Taung baby held in two hands
12 0 51 14
# IW Hunter or hunted
13 101 x The cave at Swartkrans formed relatively recently. Around 1 million years ago , it was a sink-hole, so material that accumulated here fell in by accident. Among these were bones of Australopithecus and other creatures, dropped in here by the leopards who had killed and eaten them in the trees above.
# Swartkrans
14 0 51 16
# IW Olduvai and E African sites
15 101 x Koobi Fora on Lake Turkana yielded a skull ('1470'), belonging to H. habilis or a similar species (called H. rudolfensis by those who distinguish it from H. habilis), with a brain rather larger than most H. habilis. An extremely early date around 3 million for this specimen has been disproved: it is now dated around 1.9 million years ago .
# Koobi Fora, 1470 skull
16 0 51 6
# IW Homo habilis
17 101 x In 1984, an extraordinary discovery was made at Nariokotome in West Turkana: the skeleton of a young hominid, minus his feet - the most complete skeleton of an early hominid yet found. Classified as Homo ergaster, this 1.6 million year old skeleton belonged to a boy of about 10, who would have been over 6 ft (1.8 m) had he survived to adulthood.
# PW Nariokotome
18 17 51 3
# IS Oldowan tools
19 101 x A lakeside site, dated around 1.5 million years ago, where stones arranged around burnt material have been found, possibly the earliest known man-made hearth. Scatters of small tools may have been used by H. erectus to process plant foods. Some butchery of animal carcasses may also have occurred here.
# Chesowanja
20 101 x In 1959 Louis and Mary Leakey, who had devoted thirty years to a fruitless search at Olduvai for human ancestors, at last found fragments of the skull of a massive hominid, which they called Zinjanthropus boisei. It was a turning point - the Leakeys and their son Richard went on to discover many other hominid remains. Zinjanthropus is now known as Australopithecus boisei, related to A. robustus, massive hominids who probably lived on seeds and hard-to-chew plant foods. They were not direct human ancestors.
# PW Robustus AUSTRALOPITHECINES
21 101 x In 1887, Eugene Dubois, a young Dutchman, began searching for our early ancestors in Java. He discovered bones of a hominid which became known eventually as Homo erectus. Similar remains were found in China, where they were known familiarly as 'Peking Man', and in Africa. Some modern scholars, however, consider H. erectus to have been an exclusively Asian hominid, descended from a similar but distinct hominid known as H. ergaster.
# PW H.erectus
22 101 x From around 1.5 million years ago, the hominids of Africa were making stone tools by trimming flakes from both faces of suitable stones. These tools ('bifaces') included the well known pear-shaped handaxe, with its two cutting edges tapering to a point, as well as 'cleavers' with wide cutting edges, scrapers and other types. These are known as 'Acheulean' tools after their early find site at St. Acheul in France.
# Acheulean tools
23 101 x Our early ancestors were relatively few in number and finds of their remains are correspondingly rare. The jigsaw of human ancestry is being slowly pieced together but there are many gaps, and it is often difficult to see where new pieces fit. Recent finds of possible human ancestors include bones dated around 4 million years ago, some attributed to a new genus, Ardopithecus ramidus, others to a new species, Australopithecus amamensis.
# PW Other early hominids
24 17 51 2
# IS From Ape to Man
25 101 x Developed Olduwan tools @ Around 1.5 million years ago, the simple Olduwan tools were replaced by similar but more refined tools, known as Developed Olduwan. They included a somewhat greater range of shapes, such as awls (boring tools).
