Fifty years after the discovery of Lucy, it's time to 'decolonise paleoanthropology' says leading Ethiopian fossil exper

[Judi Lynn]

Fifty years after the discovery of Lucy, it’s time to ‘decolonise paleoanthropology’ says leading Ethiopian fossil expert – podcast

Published: November 21, 2024 6:01am EST

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.

Haile-Selassie says that many of the fossils that made western scientists famous were actually discovered by local Africans, who were only acknowledged at the end of a scientific publication:

For a long time, African scholars were never part of telling the human story; nor could they actively participate in the analysis of the fossils they found. Up to the 1990s, long after Lucy was found, we were only present in the form of labourers and fossil hunters.

More:
https://theconversation.com/fifty-years-after-the-discovery-of-lucy-its-time-to-decolonise-paleoanthropology-says-leading-ethiopian-fossil-expert-podcast-243642

[erronis]

1. Scientific American Nov. 2024 has a great article on "50 Years of Lucy" with Haile-Selassie

Talking about the history of the discovery of her bones and the continued knowledge we are gaining by continuing to study them and other remains.