The impact of climate change has been detrimental to the world's biodiversity. Many animals are endangered or facing extinction. In the East Africa Savannah, poaching, drought, and habitat loss are all factors affecting wildlife. Increased human populations have also led to habitat loss, livestock-wildlife competition, and as such, Grevy's zebra are now an endangered species. [...]
The first week of the semester kicked off with the ecology module at Mpala Research Center (MRC). The biomes at the center are diverse and provide the students with a good “living laboratory” to understand the ecosystem of the region. MRC boasts great wildlife such as elephants and hippos, the endangered Grevy’s zebra, common [...]
Happy new year! I hope you all had peaceful holidays. The Spring 2020 field school is off to a great start. The students arrived on the 15th of January and we spent the first three nights at the amazing Wildebeest Eco camp. The ambience is always so peaceful and the best part, a pool to [...]
Students have been busy in their last week of the Archaeology module that marked the end of the fall semester. They have learned a lot in class about making stone tools, and with the phonolite and rhyolite they collected while camping at Nariokotome, it was time to practice making tools. The exercise was not a [...]
Our field school weekends are often filled with fun activities. Students have had the opportunity to explore different places in Turkana county such as Eliye Springs, where they were able to swim in the lake and enjoy the cool breeze at the beach. The cool beach at Eliye. Photo credit: Wambui Mbogo. [...]
Hominin's earliest technologies and development are represented in the archaeological record through assemblages of artifacts and other material remains. The oldest of the East African stone tool industries lies in the Early Stone Age which includes the Lomekwian, Oldowan and Acheulean. These industries are classified in relation to style in production and use. Our first [...]
We are in our last module of the field school, Archaeology of Turkana Basin, which is taught by Dr. Sonia Harmand, an expert in Early Stone Age archaeology and evolution of stone tool making. The Turkana Basin is rich in archaeological deposits with many of the discoveries of stone tools made on the East and [...]
What makes us distinct as humans? Perhaps even the idea of questioning is unique to humans. Paleoanthropologists have been trying to reconstruct our evolutionary tree from the fossil record for many years. Evolution involves all those changes over time that bring about diversity and are influenced by factors such as natural selection, mutation, genetic drift, [...]