Lucy, The Gem Of Ethiopia - 1279 Words

Nicky Yoong Period 4 Lucy, the Gem of Ethiopia Introduction As humans we strive to learn about our past, present, and future. It doesn’t matter where you live or who you are; you have that urge, that indescribable feeling, to know who you are and where you came from. The best place and probably the most well known place to discover the past is Africa, which harbors one of the biggest archaeology sites in the world the Great Rift Valley. Archaeology in Africa is divided into two groups. One is the study of ancient civilizations like Egypt or the Mali Empire. The other is finding human origins and how we evolved from primitive mammals. We have fossil records of humans that date back millions of years which tell us of ancient humans and our evolution to become homo sapiens. The most famous of these pre-humans is Lucy or Dinkenesh which is the Ethiopian word for â€Å"she is wonderful.† Who is Lucy? Named after the Beatles song, â€Å"Lucy in the Sky without Diamonds,† Lucy is an ancient, fossil of australopithecus afarensis, one of our predecessors. Lucy is 40% of fossilized skeleton of a three foot six, fifty pound female who roamed the Great Rift Valley 3.2 million years ago. Lucy’s male counterparts were 5 feet and around 105 pounds. This difference in size between the males and females is called sexual dimorphism and it happens in a lot of ancient and modern animals. Lucy was found in Hadar (a dig site) 217 miles away from Addis Ababa the capital of Ethiopia. Donald