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 [...]
The students have arrived at Turkwel for their final adventure of The Origins Field School, the Archaeology module. For this, we are joined by Dr. Elisabeth Hildebrand from Stonybrook University who studies the beginnings of agriculture and herding in Africa. She has also done research in East Africa area for over 10 years! Dr. [...]
As curious beings, we often question where we came from and how we came to be. We used to think of our evolutionary tree as a straight branch, with an animal that looked like a chimp furthest back, a half chimp half man transitional species, and then us. However, as the field of paleoanthropology progresses, [...]
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 [...]
Families are considered functional units of a typical human society. Depending on the geographic and cultural origin, families can come in different shapes and sizes. The most straightforward way to relate all the members of an extended family is to draw a family tree. Most people know their immediate relatives such as a parent or [...]
The moment we have all been waiting for has arrived, the human evolution module. For the module, Dr. Matthew Borths from the University of Ohio joins us to tell the story of our own evolutionary origins. Dr. Borths studies changes in African ecosystems, particularly as they relate to ape evolution, throughout the Miocene. He was [...]