Awash Valley

The Lower Awash Valley paleo-anthropological site is on top beautiful historical sites in Ethiopia. It's located in the west of the Afar Depression, 300 kilometers northeast of Addis Abeba. It has an area of around 150 km2.

The Awash Valley is home to one of the most significant collections of paleontological sites on the African continent. The bones discovered on the land, the oldest of which date back over 4 million years, show evidence of human evolution, which has altered our understanding of human history. The most remarkable find occurred in 1974 when 52 skeletal parts allowed the legendary Lucy to be rebuilt.

Excavations began in 1973 by a multinational team of paleontologists and pre-historians, continued annually until 1976, and terminated in 1980. They discovered a vast number of fossilized hominid and animal bones in a remarkable condition of preservation at the time, the oldest of which were at least four million years old. The valley provided the most complete collection of bones of a 3.2 million-year-old hominid skeleton, Australopithecus afarensis, dubbed 'Lucy,' in 1974. Afarensis has now been proven to be the ancestor of both the Australopithecus and Homo-sapiens genera.

The 4.4 million-year-old female skeleton called 'Ardi' is 1.2 million years older than the Australopithecus afarensis 'Lucy' skeleton.

There is a multitude of paleo-anthropological and pre-historic tools that have yet to be discovered and scientifically studied, and these are regarded as an extraordinarily valuable cultural legacy resource.

Address: Afar region, Ethiopia