Features

Kenyanthropus platyops: The Flat Face That Reshuffles the Pliocene

Discovered in 1999 at Lomekwi, Kenya, and described in 2001, Kenyanthropus platyops is a 3.5-million-year-old hominin with a strikingly flat face, contemporary with Lucy. Its validity as a distinct genus is debated, but its existence demonstrates the remarkable diversity of Pliocene African hominins.

Ardipithecus ramidus: Ardi, at the Roots of Humanity

Discovered in Ethiopia in 1992, Ardipithecus ramidus is one of the oldest and most complete hominins ever found. At 4.4 million years old, "Ardi" was already walking bipedally while also climbing trees, challenging our understanding of the common ancestor shared by humans and chimpanzees.

Orrorin tugenensis: The Millennium Man and the Origins of Bipedalism

Discovered in 2000 in Kenya's Tugen Hills, 6-million-year-old Orrorin tugenensis plunges us into the origins of human bipedalism and the oldest debate in paleoanthropology.

Australopithecus anamensis: Lucy's Ancestor and the Oldest Confirmed Australopith

4.2 million years ago, the oldest confirmed australopith already walked the Kenyan savanna. Discover Australopithecus anamensis and the complete skull that reshapes our understanding of its origins.

Environment

Pliocene and Early Pleistocene: the world that forged our ancestors

From 7 to 0.78 million years ago, Africa dried out, savannas spread, and the megafauna of large mammals reached its peak. A world in upheaval that forced hominins to innovate.

Paranthropus: The Robust Australopiths and Their Evolutionary Dead End

Paranthropus boisei and robustus thrived in Africa for over a million years with their massive jaws and giant molars. Discover the Nutcracker Man and the fate of these specialized hominins.

Australopithecus sediba: South Africa's Missing Link?

Discovered in 2008 by a 9-year-old boy at Malapa Cave, Australopithecus sediba reshapes the human evolutionary tree with its unique mosaic anatomy, halfway between australopith and Homo.

Homo ergaster: Africa's Ancestor of the Upright Man

1.9 million years ago, Homo ergaster redefined human evolution: modern body proportions, enlarged brain, Acheulean handaxes. Discover the Turkana Boy and the revolution he represents.

Bidzar Petroglyphs: The Enigma of North Cameroon's Rock Art

In the Mayo-Louti department, some 500 abstract geometric engravings were carved into calcite marble slabs -- between 300 and 3,000 years ago. The Bidzar site, reported in 1933 and a UNESCO heritage candidate, is a unique prehistoric treasure in Central Africa.

From Quartz to Megaliths: Senegal's Remarkable Prehistory

In the east, a quartz-knapping workshop 9,000 years old in the Faleme hills. In the west, over 1,000 laterite stone circles raised along the Gambia River -- the largest megalithic concentration in the world, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2006.

prehistoire

The Tassili n'Ajjer: Rock Art of the Sahara

Inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1982, the Tassili n'Ajjer preserves more than 15,000 rock paintings and engravings: a unique visual archive of 10,000 years of Saharan human history.

Hominins

Homo erectus: The First World Conqueror, from Africa to Java

For 1.8 million years, Homo erectus colonised three continents, invented the Acheulean handaxe, tamed fire, and cared for its elderly. This dossier traces the history of the most long-lived human species: its discoveries, anatomy, migrations, and the mysteries it still poses.

prehistoire

Homo habilis: The Handy Man of Olduvai and the Oldowan Industry

Discovered in 1960 at Olduvai Gorge, Homo habilis is the first undisputed member of the genus Homo. Its Oldowan tools, expanded brain, and complex foraging strategies opened the way for all subsequent human evolution over two million years.

Australopithecus and Paranthropines: Lucy, the Taung Child, and the Robust Ones

From Lucy to the paranthropines: three million years of australopithecine history, when Africa hosted a diverse array of bipedal hominins with contrasting evolutionary fates.

Palaeolithic

First Hominins: from Toumai to Ardipithecus, 7 Million Years of Evolution

From Sahelanthropus tchadensis (Toumai, 7 Ma) to Ardipithecus ramidus (Ardi, 4.4 Ma), a journey through the four species that open the book of human evolution, long before tools and the savanna.

Palaeoanthropology

Paranthropus: the robust cousin that almost ruled Africa

For over a million years, a [[hominide|hominin]] with extraordinary jaws coexisted with the earliest members of our genus across eastern and southern Africa. Paranthropus is not our ancestor, but its fate sheds light on what made Homo a success.

Prehistoric art

Blombos: the oldest symbolic drawings of Homo sapiens

In a cave overlooking the Indian Ocean, researchers found a 73,000-year-old ochre cross-hatch, the oldest known drawing by Homo sapiens. Blombos Cave reveals behavioural modernity far older than Europe's painted caves.

Palaeoanthropology

Lucy: the skeleton that redrew the human family tree

On 24 November 1974, in Ethiopia's Afar, Donald Johanson unearthed a 3.2-million-year-old australopithecine. Lucy forced an unsettling truth: walking upright came long before the big brain.