FrontPage: NNIGN

1. Trash takes on new meaning in this guy’s hands. Francisco de Pajaro likes to trawl the streets around London's Brick Lane, doing creative things with refuse. His work is ephemeral, since it generally gets cleared away in the morning. FrontPage: NNIGN The Last Word: No Homework

2. Early Africa Land, People and Art Chapter 3, Section 3

3. Earliest Humans in Africa? • Earliest evidence of humans comes from eastern and southern Africa • Includes fossil remains, cave paintings, and plant and animal life • **Climate in Africa often hinders the search for further clues • Most important discovery made at Olduvai Gorge • Located in Tanzania on the edge of the Great Rift valley • Location of important archaeological discovery

4. Olduvai Gorge • Mary and Louis Leakey • Found fossil remains in the 1950s that may have belonged to the first humans • Led scientists to believe that eastern Africa was home to the first humans

5. A Common Ancestor? • Scientists have studied the DNA of people from many different areas • Some have concluded that we all share a certain strand of DNA • This may mean we all have a common ancestor, a woman who may have lived over 100,000 years ago (“Eve”)

6. A Common Ancestor?

7. Records on Stone • African Rock paintings • Provide evidence of ancient people living in eastern and southern Africa • Earliest up to 11,000 years old, some only 200 years old • Rock art can be found all over Africa • 2 important sites • Brandberg, Namibia • Tassili-n-Ajer, Algeria

8. Brandberg, Namibia • Site of a wealth of early African rock art • Mountain area with nearly 1000 areas of paintings, over 43,000 figures

9. The White Lady of the Brandberg

10. Women engaged in ceremonial activity

11. Tassili-n-Ajer, Algeria • Numerous pictures reveal the history of the Sahara desert • From these paintings, scientists believe the desert was once much wetter than it is now.

12. Catfish, hippos and other water-based creatures appear about 5000BC

13. Types of prehistoric cattle appear in this painting, along with other hunted animals and fauna

14. In later paintings, horses appear with chariots • Used to cross the Sahara. • From about 1200 BC

15. Camels appear about 120BC, indicating that the Sahara was no longer passable with wheeled vehicles

16. Purpose of Rock Art • Some paintings believed to be part of superstition or religious purposes • Good luck on hunting expeditions • Others may be records of key events or times of great crisis • Meeting of groups, battles, etc. • Provide a glimpse into the lives of people who lived in Africa thousands of years ago.

17. Review • Where was the most important discovery of early human remains in Africa? What did this tell us? • What name was given to the woman scientists believe may be the “mother of humanity”? • What does the rock art found in Tassili, Algeria tell us about the Sahara? • Name one purpose of rock art.