Above is pictured the central courtyard of the Museum with the house of culture to the left.
(Source: photo was taken by William Kemp at National Museum and House of Culture)
I have found that many students often struggle to tie the information in the textbooks they are reading to the "real world" and to visualize what they are reading about. Fortunately for me, I have had the privilege to spend the summer working in a country so vital to the history of mankind and one of the meccas for anthropologists from around the world.
When I first read about this project I knew at once what I shall write about. The Laetoli footprints, an archeological discovery that rocked paleoanthropology to its core were discovered in northern Tanzania and is still a point of pride for Tanzanians. This very archeological site, I came across in chapter four of our textbook and it captivated me. I soon discovered the National Museum and House of Culture in downtown Dar es Salaam held an exhibit and I was there at the first opportunity.
Upon finding the building, my roommate and I were disappointed to find the Museum deserted and believed it closed until we found an employee watching a video on their phone by the reception desk. My roommate was able to get the student discount of fewer than fifty cents while I paid the full price of roughly two and a half dollars. We had almost the entire place to ourselves and saw only two other visitors in the few hours we spent there. We at once set off to find the exhibit for the Laetoli footprints.
Now let me emphasize the importance of this discovery before I continue. The Laetoli footprints were discovered in 1976 by Mary Leakey and her team. These were a set of footsteps that made an impression in soft volcanic ash, which measure roughly 24 meters long and contain the footprints of at least two individuals. This discovery rewrote the theories of how mankind developed, at the time from the dogma that as hominin brains grew they began to walk more upright. This shattered that notion by placing the small-brained Ardilopithicus striding bipedally 3.6-3.9 mya.
(Source: photo was taken by William Kemp at National Museum and House of Culture)
While this is expounded upon in my report the gravity of this discovery cannot be overlooked. Pictured above is a casting on display in the exhibit along with an artists rendition of the possible event as a backdrop. While perhaps overdramatized, the illustration gives a general perspective of what the event may have looked like. The room of the exhibit, much like the museum, on the whole, was quite empty and silent, except for an insistently clinking broken fan above us.
In this exhibit, our guides became the informational signs which hung in abundance around the room as we walked from sign to sign. I had read of the footprints and knew most of what was on display, but the one thing missing from books and articles is the tangible nature of seeing something before you. While I could imagine the scene vaguely in my head the trip to the National Museum and House of Culture, more than anything made me long to see the site itself. I marked down in my book that I must find a way to make it to the site and take one step closer to the tangible realities of anthropology.
(Source: photo was taken by William Kemp at National Museum and House of Culture)
There are more major theories for why hominins became bipedal that we have fingers to count them on and yet, finding a theory that garners widespread acceptance, has proved just as elusive as ever. Some think early hominins began to stand to free up their hands, and others say to was to search for preditors more effectively, or even to reduce sun exposure. Do you have any thoughts on what might have caused our ancestors to begin to stand and walk bipedally?
Also, is there anything that you think might help to answer these questions about our bipedal evolution? Is there anything that if you were a paleoanthropologist that you would hope to find to help elucidate the great questions over the subject?
Below I have attached a brief PBS video on the subject of bipedalism that helps to give a better perspective on the possible evolution of this invaluable mechanism of locomotion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bFtotU0of4&t=1s
References:
- https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/07/1/l_071_03.html
- Human evolution - Theories of bipedalism. (2019). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/science/human-evolution/Theories-of-bipedalism
- The National Museum and House of Culture, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
- Haviland, W. The Essence of Anthropology, 4e. [Yuzu]. Retrieved from https://reader.yuzu.com/#/books/9781305465411/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bFtotU0of4&t=1s
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