During the time when Professor Kabtwinkel, A German entomologist was pursuing a strange butterfly, in 1911, he fell down a ravine, in a place known as Olduvai Gorge situated in Serengeti. Although it was a serious fall, the scientists were able to save his life.
With an exception of a scientist, absolutely no one would have appreciated that the rocky wall was an exceptionally different fossil bed when Professor opened his eyes.
After this incidence, man’s conception of his own origin completely changed.
If we go right from the start to the dawn of mankind, the history of Kenya can then be told.

In the C19th, Victorian Science, was a revolution which was boosted by the pioneering theories of great names like Huxley, Lamark, Wallace, Haeckel and Darwin on natural selection and species evolution, since a common ancestor for man and apes against the Biblical conception of one creation, was suggested by them.
Apestulance that an apeman, Pithecanthropus existed, who would have made a sunken continent called Lemuria, close to India his habitat, was made by Ernst Haeckel.

The Dutch Anthropologist, Eugene Dubois who in 1983 discovered a Pithecanthropus erectus or the man from Java and so contributed the First evidence for the existance of Pithecanthropus, was obsessed by the quest for the ‘Missing Link’ between man and ape.

The place where mankind was born, located to be the Asian continent by the trends of time, based on Lemuna hypothesis and this evidence provided by Eugene.
It was not until Darwin’s theory which located the ‘Humankind Craddle’ in Africa started gaining Empirical support that Kattwinkel acted his famous stumble.
In South Africa, still in 1893, the fossil remains of an approximately 2 million year old pre-hominid, Australopithecus africanus being older than Dubois’ ape man by one million years was unearthed by Dart and Broom.
During the First 3 decades of the C20th, the role   this new genera as an ancestor of modern man kept on generating discussion as new discoveries started outlining this new genera’s genealogy.

The Olduvai site at which 400 skull fragments of a prehominid, Zinjanthropus boisei were discovered in 1959, was extensively studies in 1931 by Dr. Louis Leakey together with his fiancée Mary, Kenyans of British Origin.
That Zinjanthropus was an actual evolved primate capable of carving stone to make tools was a suggestion by the adjacent remains.
Zinjanthropus afterwards re-classified age was dated 1.75 million years within the Australopithecus genera in 1961.
This was cited to be the First evidence showing that pre hominids existed in East Africa.
Another evidence of huge importance and significance followed and in this one, remains of an evolved hominid able to carve stone axes, called the Homo habilis with an approximate age of 1.4 million years were discovered by the Leakeys in the year 1960.

A boast in the knowledge of Paleoanthropology was achieved by the 70’s and 80’s.
Footprints and fossils of hominids aged 3.6 million, who lived in the Laetoli area near Olduvai, were described by Mary Leakey.

The discoveries of Homo habilis remains dated 2 million years back were made by the exploration of the Koobi For a site near Lake Turkana by Mary’s son, Richard, together with the Kenya Paleonthologist, Benard Ngeno’s co-operation.
A skeleton of a 3.5 million years old female Australopithecus, which so far became the most ancient species of Australopithecus known, was unearthed by Don Johanson and Tim White, the creature of which, they gave a name Lucy. This was done more Northwards, in Ethiopia.
Richard Leakey achieved an almost finished reconstruction of a Homo erectus skeleton known as the famous ‘Turkana boy’, a hominid aged 1.6 million years, ten years later, in 1984.

Richard had formerly considered the modern man to be the possible direct ancestor of homo sapiens and according to his cranial capacity, this homid was more evolved.
To this same species if homo sapiens was Dubois’ Pithecanthropus assimilated.

A panorama, which was about to diffuse was allowed by research to be drawn, while description of new Australopithecin species was taking place and the species were starting to fall into place.
To the Southern and Eastern Africa were the hominids and pre hominids limited, not until more than one million years ago.

Australopithecus and Homo being the two major evolutionary divergent branches coexisted until the more primitive, Australopithecus became distinct.
Some few pioneering Homo erectus clans moved to Asia one million years ago.
An entrepreneurial and inquisitive scientist called Eugene Dubois made a discovery one million years later, of one homo erectus that had reached the Solo river banks, during the early migrations, only to die there.

The origin of pre hominids is pushed further back in history, by the more recent findings that keep the thrill.
Ardipithecus  ramidus  is a new species found in Ethiopia, whose remains were dated by Tim White and Berhane Asfaw in 4.4 million years, in 1994.
A discovery of a 4.2 million-year old elderly man, Australopithecus anamensis, now the oldest of Australopithecins and judged to be the ancestor of Australopithecus afarensis was made by Meave Leakey, Richard’s wife, together with Alan Walker’s co-operation one year later at the Turkana site.
Doctors Marin Pickford and Brigitte Jenut, leading a French-Kenyan team, in November 2000, discovered 6 million year old fossilized hominids’ remains in rock layers in Kapsomin, located in the Tugen Hills at Baringo District.

During 100000-140000 years ago, our fore parents saw the light and began filling the planet with populations, which brought about the origins of Homo sapiens the modern man.

The biography of our ancestors is however very incomplete.
The book of Mankind’s History still contains many empty pages however much an invaluable support in molecular biography has today been found by the study of fossil remains.
A previous species, Homo ergaster, who was a true ancestor of ours, is one to which Homo erectus is said to be a blind alley of.
100,00 years ago, Homo erectus became extinct and was considered a predecessor of man formerly.
This species was thought to some how be a precursor of the Europeans ‘Heidelberg man’ or Homo heidelbergensis, which some 200,000 years ago was extinct and Neanderthal Man or Homo neanderthalensis his successor, coexisted with the Homo Sapiens and 30,000 years ago vanished in thin air.

The Scientific community, that holds two opposed theories, could simply discuss the matter of the evolutionary line between our grandfather Homo ergaster and us.

Origin of Homosapiens’ models:
The hypothesis refered to as ‘Garden of Eden’ and also given names like ‘Mitochondrial Eve’, ‘Out of Africa’ or ‘Noah’s Ark’ is one after which, 200,000 years ago, a small African population comprising all modern humans with our origin lived and of which, survival was for only one maternal lineage, was supported by the First genetic evidences.
This therefore implies that everyone of us would be from the descendant line of a single common mother, for whom  our mitochondrial DNA would keep her inheritance, the genetic sequences contained in the cellular part that distributes energy, which only a mother transmits to all her offsprings.
The extinction of the Local pre-existing groups, among which are the last Asian populations of Homo erectus and European Homo delbergensis, is the result of the Exodus of the descendants of this primeval “Eve” towards Asia and Europe.

The invaluable findings in Autapuerca in Spain, which are opposite the Mitochondrial Eve theory, have provided the Multi regional, a rival mode with support.

Regional continuity, present day human population racial difference originator and distinctive anatomical features that persisted over time, were developed by the migratory populations of Homo erectus in Asia and Europe according to It’s Mitochondrial hypothesis.
The Homo Sapiens is a single form to which these individual groups in parallel evolved over thousands of years.
780,00 years ago, the unearthing of the fossils assigned to Homo antecessor, a novel species, whose oldest remains dated the Earliest European Homo species, by the Spanish research team in the Burgos Province mountain range, is a basis on which Atapuerca findings’ contribution to this model of the Homosapiens is put.
These first dwellers would have evolved independently towards our species with Asian and African groups doing the same rather than becoming extinct upon invasion by Homo Sapiens from Africa. For instance the ‘Mitochondrial Eve’ theory they would defend, had it been that the Homo antecessor was a direct ancestor of all European Homo Sapiens, including us, as is postulated.

Paleoan thropologists have not yet precisely achieved the species to consider as common ancestors to man and modern ape, in this exciting context and despite us getting closer to meet our fore parents somewhere beneath the African soil, in a continent which is someway still an unexplored territory, is where this primeval man-ape sleeps.