Category Archives: Ethiopia

Ethiopia Reprise: Tiya Stela Site

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On March 1, we also drove down to Tiya to see the stelae there.

According to UNESCO: “Of the roughly 160 archaeological sites discovered so far in the Soddo region, south of Addis Ababa, Tiya is one of the most important. The site contains 36 monuments, including 32 carved stelae covered with symbols, for the most part difficult to decipher, which are the remains of an ancient Ethiopian culture, whose age has not yet been precisely determined.”

Recent excavations revealed that the stones mark mass graves of both males and females (displaying breasts) who died between the ages of 18 and 30 and were laid to rest in a foetal position. One symbol appears to indicate a sword, the number of swords perhaps representing the number of people killed by the person buried below. Another symbol looks like typical African neck pillows. The symbol that looks like a Greek epsilon has as yet no known meaning.

On the way back, we saw a beautiful mountain, slowed down in a typical small town, and got stopped by a herd of cows, a premonition of events to come.

Back in Addis, the driver helped me change dollars to birrs at the bank and purchase some kersone in preparation for my camping trip the following day March 2. I took pictures of a couple of mosques in Addis.

Ethiopia Reprise: Adadi Mariam Church

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On March 1, on the way from Melka Kunture to the Adadi Mariam church, we came across some cows threshing teff under the urging of a farmer.

We also drove through a local marketplace.

After paying admission of around US$4, I got to check out the Adadi Mariam rock-hewn church, which is apparently similar to some of the churches at Lallibella which I didn’t have the opportunity to see.

Ethiopia Reprise: Melka Kunture

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This is the map for the trip to Melka Kunture and surrounds.

March 1 was my big day for visiting the human origins discovery site at Melka Kunture, south of Addis Ababa. Village Ethiopia sold me a little tour that featured Melka Kunture along with a visit to the stelae at Tiya and to the Adadi Mariam church.

The 4WD vehicle driver picked me up at 8:00am and we set off on the trip. I was struck again by the Ethiopian construction crews’ use of wooden scaffolding even for very tall buildings. A herd of goats brought traffic to a halt. The countryside was beautiful.

In fact, all varieties of animals block the road, including these donkeys. I’d describe the terrain as semi-desert because the trees and plants still look green and obviously get some regular water, although in some places the terrain is quite dry.

Farmers living in the tukuls in the countryside tuck their teff mounds nearby. Teff is the staple grain of most of Ethiopia and they use it to make the tasty injeera bread consumed all over the country.

The Melka Kunture human discovery site had a fancy gate, and after checking our papers, the guard let us in. The exhibits at the site are in several tukuls. They describe all the well-known human discovery sites, but Herto is not highlighted, probably because Herto happened after the scientists had set up the Melka Kunture exhibits.

Because the Melka Kunture exhibits display replicas of fossil Homo sapiens skulls along with those of precursor and related species, the site provides an excellent illustration of the human evolutionary process. I focus mainly on the Homo sapiens remains in the photos I present here, including information on the Omo, Melka Kunture, and Herto discovery sites. The fossil skull replicas shown below are: Homo sapiens skull fragements, 300,000 – 200,000 years ago, from Garba III site at Melka Kunture, Ethiopia; Homo sapiens, 90,000 years ago, from Qafzeh, Israel; Homo neanderthalenthis, 45,000 years ago, from Amud, Israel; and Homo sapiens sapiens, 15,000 – 9,000 years ago, from Border Cave, South Africa.

The exhibits display the tools found with each evolutionary ancestor or relative and the presentations on tool-making are the best I have seen, especially as far as illustrating the steps of the Levallois method. Human use of the Levallois toolmaking method represents a major step forward in human thought by being able to conceive of how a tool should appear within the materials at hand, then constructing the tool to the mind’s notion of how it should appear. I present here also the full array of Garba III tools since they represent early Homo sapiens tools.

After finishing with the tukul exhibits, the staff bring the visitor out to view a couple of the actual excavation sites. Archaeologists are not currently excavating these sites, but may return next season for further investigations.

Ethiopia Reprise: Final Days in Addis Ababa

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On February 27 and 28, I readied myself for departure from Addis. I made my final visit to the Internet cafe and the guy there who helped me out.

I took some pictures of the Finfine Hotel because it’s a beautiful place to stay, especially with the thermal waters available for bathing in the ample bathroom.

Public bulletin boards campaign against AIDS.

Schoolchildren walking home on the streets of Addis.

I visited the Ethiopian Ethnological Museum {?} on the University of Addis Ababa campus. They didn’t permit photography inside the museum, so these pictures are of the outside of the museum building and the university grounds, along with a couple of students from southern Ethiopia I met and with whom I chatted.

I called up Paulos from Piazza after visiting the university. I wanted to meet him once more before heading out of town. He invited me back to his place. His apartment is basically one room, an eight-foot cube packed into a little compound with other rooms of similar size where other people live. His friend Abdela Assiz was chewing chaat, a leafy stimulant common in Africa, at his place when we arrived.

Here is the spot where Paulos and I met. The locals call it Satan Bet, which means the devil’s house. When the theater first opened, some residents thought its music and theater productions would corrupt everyone. Now, everyone is used to it.

More National Museum in Addis Ababa

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Continuing on from the previous blog entry, the National Museum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, has some other impressive modern pieces, such as this statue called “Hair Style”, the painting “Genital Mutilation” by Abebe Zelelew (2003), and “Fetel” by Marta Mengistu (2004).

“Bedebo Fetel” is by an unknown artist.

On the ground floor of the museum is also a section on other historical periods of Ethiopia (and now Eritrea). Many items I am not able to identify because they were not labeled well, such as these pictures of Ethiopian tribal people.

Some are musical instruments like the secular krar and its liturgical counterpart.

How about an Ethiopian game?

I loved these brilliantly carved artifacts, the latter one being a limestone seat niche decorated with a relief of persons and an ibex from the 5th to 4th century BCE in Haoulti, Tigrai, Ethiopia.

Then, from the second half of the first millenium BCE in Hawlti, Tigrai, Ethiopia, we have two red earthenware female figurines and a group of buff earthenware human figurines.

From the second century BCE to the second century CE in Kuhi, Tigrai, comes a buff earthenware tripod pod with “human legs”.

From the fifth to fourth century BCE in Goboshela or Gobochela, Tigrai, comes a limestone and alabaster altar with an inscription in “South Arabic” about a family’s dedication to their god “for the protection of their life” and a stone incense burner from the sixth to fifth century BCE in the same region with the inscription “Ylbb the stone worker has dedicated to Almaqah”.

From the end of the first millenium BCE in Addi-Galamo, Tigrai, a small alabaster altar and, from the sixth to fifth century BCE in the same region, a limestone statue of a female with the inscription in “South Arabian” (looks like a different language to me) of “For god grants a child to Yamanat.”

Then, we see an bronze oil lamp depicting a dog hunting an ibex from before the first century BCE in Matara, now part of Eritrea.

The collection also holds some exquisite female figurines from Matara that look similar to the really ancient Anatolian mother goddess figures, two in terra cotta and one in white stone, date information unfortunately not listed.

Here’s an exquisite amphora used to import wine and olive oil from the Mediterranean to Axum, Tigrai, in the fourth to seventh century CE.

Photo of unidentified anthropomorphic stela from Southern Ethiopia.

Finally, when I left the museum, I wandered around the grounds and came across this cafe in a traditional building called a tukul.

  

Ethiopia Reprise: Addis Ababa

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After that Sunday (February 25) touring Addis Ababa with Paulos, I had an appointment scheduled with Dr. Berhane Asfaw at the Paleo Lab of the National Museum. Dr. Asfaw is one of my heroes because he was on the team that made the discoveries of three human remains at Herto in the Afar area of the Awash region of the Great Rift Valley in Ethiopia. In fact, he discovered the skull of a child in hundreds of pieces which he painstakingly cleaned and puzzled back together — a remarkable accomplishment which brought us much light on our early origins as the species Homo sapiens. The interview went very well.

After the interview, I visited the National Museum and saw many interesting exhibits, including an excellent replica of Lucy, who was not Homo sapiens, but still an interesting gal who is back there somewhere in the early story of human origins.

The theory of how human ancestors began walking on two feet (bipedalism) instead of four feet seemed simple, but further discoveries have complicated matters.

For my current research, I’m focusing mainly on Homo sapiens, the species of humans alive today. The earliest Homo sapiens on record so far appear around 200,000 to 160,000 years ago. One example is this skull (replica shown below) found in Lower Omo region of the Great Rift Valley in Ethiopia. I tried to go to the excavation site but the location was too remote and the bridge I would have needed to cross to get there has collapsed.

My favorite Homo sapiens remains are those discovered by Dr. Asfaw, Tim White of University of California at Berkeley, and others at Herto in the Afar area of the Awash region of the Great Rift Valley in Ethiopia. They believe the remains are different enough from modern Homo sapiens sapiens to merit a separate sub-species which they dubbed Homo sapiens idaltu (replica shown below). Idaltu means “elder” in the language of the local Afar tribe in Herto village where the archaeologists discovered the remains.

The National Museum in Addis also exhibits old Ethiopian Orthodox illustrated manuscripts and modern Ethiopian art like “African Heritage” by Afewerk Tekle (1967), a painting about the Derg period in Ethiopian history, and “Three Faces of Africa” by Daniel Tohafe (1980).

Other notable examples include “How Long?” by TBD and “Ethiopian Symphony No. 5” by Girmay Hiwet (2001)

Lawrence Arrives Triumphantly in Khartoum…

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Well, that was one possible inspiration. But actually, I entered Khartoum sick as a really sick dog. In fact, it was the same sick from the Simien Mountains I wrote about in the last post. I only spent one night in the hospital until they ran tests that showed I was “normal” in every way (heh) except a stool test showed some pus (eew!). So, I started taking Cipro today and escaped from the IV dextrose drips at the hospital. Thanks to Pasteur, Fleming, and all the other relevant deities and spirits for antibiotics! And cell phones! More later… I’m fine, really. Please don’t worry. I’m at a good friend’s place, very comfortable now and I’ll have lots of time to rest and recover here.

Traveling Sick

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Bleck! When I went on a trek up into the Simien Mountains, I got sick. I was trying to hike uphill at high altitude with a scout and a “horse-man” guiding a horse carrying my bags. Probably because of something I ate or drank the day before (the local talla sorghum beer perhaps?), I ended up puking while on the trail. I think my scout wanted me to keep on hiking, but that was out of the question. So, we flagged down a truck and got up to the camp. I got some great pictures before I got sick. The area has beautiful panoramic landscapes. The next morning we headed back down to Debark on a bus that was so overpacked I couldn’t even reach my camera to take a picture of it. I got out of Debark and back on another really bumpy bus to Gonder, which is pleasant and civilized by comparison. I’m still weak and a bit dizzy without solid food in a few days. But, I think I’m going to try to take the buses for Khartoum starting tomorrow (unless I feel worse tomorrow morning). I may stop by a clinic this afternoon. About half of travelers to Africa end up getting something like this, so it’s not really a surprise. I am a bit homesick at the moment. When I arrive in Khartoum, I’ll try to post more details and pictures. Hugs from Gonder!

The Gonder Castles Are Beautiful

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And I’ll write more about them soon.

But this is just a note to say that I’ve arrived here.

I’m planning to spend a few days in the Simien mountains, then coming back to Gonder and heading over the Sudanese border at Mettama. Theoretically, I should arrive in Khartoum, Sudan, around the target date of March 15.

I will probably have much better Internet access there and catch up on posting to the blog with pictures!

Arrived in Axum

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I arrived in Axum today and the Internet connections are spotty. So, have a look on a map to see where I am.

It’s possible to use google.com to get automatic email notifications when I post a new entry on my blog. If you can’t figure it out on your own, I’ll try to post the directions here soon.

Big hugs to all from Ethiopia!