Even though today Olorgesailie is a comfortable place, with good water, easy access to towns, and relative safety from animals, in the past it would not have been so. What I find so amazing is that, even during the tumultuous climate changes of the…
Last week I mentioned the debate about modern human origins - how some people think that modern human behavior originated quite late in prehistory, around the time when biologically modern humans arrived in Europe, while others think it developed…
Alison and John returned from their safari today with their children, Elizabeth and Alexander, and Elizabeth's friend Sarah. This is the first time that Elizabeth and Alexander have visited Olorgesailie, but it's certainly not the first time they've…
In a couple weeks our field season will end. Instead of waiting for the last Saturday evening, I decided that last night was a good time for our annual goat roast and camp party. Every year I buy a goat and present it to our field excavation crew to…
I want to use today's dispatch to describe to you Warren Sharp's research. He joined our group a few days ago, and his work is going along very well. His work is part of a new study to help us find better ways of dating our sites. Like Al Deino, he's…
In Locality G, where we've discovered Middle Stone Age sites, there's one site in particular called the Green Clay Site. A portion of the site was excavated two years ago. Amanda and one of our crew members, Vincent Kimeu, have renewed the digging at…
John and Alison left this afternoon to meet their children, who happen to be visiting Nairobi. They'll all go on a safari together to see the famed animals and landscapes of Kenya. While they're gone for a few days, work is continuing in Locality G.…
Today was the last day of the Geology Field Course, and this morning I was able to listen in on a few of the students' final presentations. One project they've been working on during the past three weeks is to compare the geology and fauna of lower…
One of Al's colleagues at the Berkeley Geochronology Center, Warren Sharp, joined us to help with the dating. Warren does a slightly different kind of dating from Al, but I'll describe that later. He, Al, Kay, John, and Amanda spent today walking up…
My good friend and colleague Alan Deino joined us this weekend and spent some very busy days walking around the basin looking for new tuffs to sample. I already described how we date tuffs using the argon-argon method, and how useful it is for…