Welcome to the Origins Field School blog Spring 2018! My name is Deming Yang, Resident Academic Director for the field school. I will be accompanying the students, TA’s and instructors throughout all of the field school modules. As part of the Field School support team, I will do my best to make sure that our [...]
On Tuesday May 30th, a vast storm hit the Ileret area and brought an immense amount of rain. Within a short period of 9 hours, TBI Ileret facility documented a record-high rainfall of more than 200 mm (8 inches). This amount is much more than a typical rainstorm at Ileret (~20 mm), and more than [...]
As most people are enjoying the beach and sunshine in the US, some Stony Brook students took a long shot and came to the shores of Lake Turkana, Kenya. They are here for the brand-new Global Innovation Field School! The Global Innovation summer program is organized by the College of Engineering & Applied Sciences, Stony [...]
It is finally the end of the Archaeology module and our field school students have learned a lot about stone tools. Now it is time to put them in good use! Cracking nuts using a hammer stone and an anvil is just the beginning of technology. To convince ourselves that the stone flakes we made are capable [...]
As the field school comes close to its end, students finally had the opportunity to experience how different pieces of information can be put together to tell a compelling story of human history. And we do it the TBI style: in the field! Equipped with all kinds of digging tools ranging from trowels to buckets, [...]
The TBI Turkwel campus has one of the best outlook points around the area: the roof of the research labs. From there, several landmarks in the region are clearly visible. Towards the south, there are two peaks barely noticeable above the horizon. They are in the area known as Lothagam, geologically one of the most [...]
Now that our field school students have gained a good understanding of how early stone tools are made, it is time to find some stone tools in the field! And that is what the students have been waiting for! The Origins Field School has a tradition of visiting one of the most well-known hominin sites [...]
It is now the second week of the human evolution module of the Origins Field School and our dedicated students are ready for a new set of adventures! In the classroom, we have been learning about how different evolutionary theories have been developed around a rather limited hominin fossil record. With all the gaps in [...]