Joseph Kipkoech
20 October 2007
Nairobi — The Lukeino basin of Kabarnet in Baringo district has over the years been attracting scholars, especially historians. The basin in Kipsaraman division has been yielding exciting evidence concerning the prehistoric human being.
One could rightly say that the 1,500-sq-km basin is a book on human evolution.
Many remains of the Orrorin Tugenensis - a primate widely considered to be an ancestor of today's human being - have been found in the area.
Orrorin has been collected at four sites at Kapsomin, the richest site in the southern part of the basin, which has a cliff of basalt near a lake's edge.
Many of the Orrorin's fossils were found at the foot of the cliff, and damage to the bones indicate that it was probably the prey of a large carnivore, most likely a leopard, remains of which were also found at the site.
Nearby, according to the Kipsaraman community museum curator, Ms Charity Gatumu, there were hot springs, and some of the Orrorin bones were covered in a thin film of travertine deposited by the hot waters that erupted from them.
The greater Lukeino formation covers fossil sites such as Kapsonlin, Cheberen, Chepkesin, Kapturo, Yatya, Karuwen, Kositei, Tabarin, Rondinin and Musionin gullies.
The Lukeino formation (6.5 million to 7 million years old) stretches from Aragai, near Sibilo in the south, to Ribon in the north.
Most of the deposits are lake beds, but in the south near Rondinin, there are river deposits rich in fossils.
Orrorin Tugenensis, points out Ms Gatumu, was collected at Kapsomin and other sites in the area.
Bones as well as the skull of a gazelle with its horn covers, the teeth of impalas, monkeys and other mammals were found there too.
The presence of impalas at Kapsomin reveals that the environment was probably woodland, quite different from the semi-arid and bushland that Kapsomin is today.
The lake beds at the Lukeino formation are rich in fossil fish and leaves, which show that the region was wooded and even forested six million years ago.
Cheboit is a richly fossiliferous basal part of the Lukeino formation that yielded the first evidence of Miocene hominids in 1974, the same year that the australopitilecine Lucy was found. The fossil was a lower third molar.
The fine fossil skull from Cheboit, belongs to a giant pig known as Nyanzachoenis.
The first specimens of this extinct pig were found at Kanam on the shores of Lake Victoria, hence its name.
It has since been found in many parts of Africa, including Tunisia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Malawi and South Africa.
At the Kapcheberek site within the Lukeino formation, the curator explains, it yielded the hand phalanx of Orrorin Tugenensis, which suggests that Orrorin could still climb trees.
The bones found at Cheboit were from Chemositia Tugenensis. The name "Chemositia" is derived from the Kalenjin legend of a wild beast locally known as chemosit, which gave rise to the myth of the Nandi bear. Scientifically, it is a Chalicathere (stone beast), a strange relative of the rhino and the horse, but much bigger than a horse.
The full skull and the lower jaw of a crocodile were excavated at Ngembo Kaplelach, near Yatya.
The region that covers the Lukeino formation contains volcanic rock and sediments deposited during the last 17 million years of the earth's history.
Past conditions
Kabarnet National Museum of Kenya curator Daniel Kipkorir says these findings shed light on past conditions in the region, including climate and how it changed, its fauna and flora, volcanic activity and many other aspects of interest to scientists and lay people.
Mr Kipkorir adds that the earliest evidence of the bipedal hominid is from Rondinin, in the Lukeino formation. Here the six million old fossils of millennium man Orrorin Tugenensis were discovered in October 2000.
The discovery of Orrorin Tugenensis at the Rondinin heritage site, now referred to as Orrorin's land, added more than 1.5 million years to the history of tile family of hominidae (humans).
Orrorin Tugenensis, he says, had a head, hands and legs, and reveals its systematic status, structure, diet, locomotion, body size mid gender. And at six million years, Mr Kipkorir notes, for the first time the very early chapters of the history of human evolution is being read.
Before its discovery, the earliest known hominid was about 4.2 million years - a poorly known species that has several chimpanzees. Many people before the discovery of Orrorin Tugenensis thought that australopithecines were the direct ancestors of humans, and that the split between apes and humans took place about 4.5 million years ago.
It is now known, he adds, that the split must have taken place considerably earlier (8-9 million years ago) and that australopithecines are likely to be a branch of the hominid evolution.
This means that palaeonthropologists now have evidence, for the first time, of the opening chapters of human evolution, and that the ancestors of Orrorin Tugenensis must have branched away from the African apes some 2 or 3 million years earlier.
Despite its great age (6 millions years) Orrorin is more human - for instance in its teeth and femora - than any of the australopithecines, and it is thus more likely to be a direct ancestor of humans.
Ms Gatumu notes that Orrorin changes not only our appreciation of the time scale of human origins, but also many people's ideas about the pathways by which humans evolved in the past.
She adds that the Lukeino formation in general and the Rondinin heritage site in particular show that Africa is rich in cultural heritage.
The rich pre-historic past uncovered by palaeontology and archaeology, ranging from geological time scale, taxonomy, fossils, tools, change and environment, have attracted scholars who appreciate the fact that evolution is not confined to humans, but is a process that cuts across all living organisms.
It shows also that Africa is the cradle of mankind, and has seen the development of states, kingdoms, towns and a high level of artwork. Olduvai Gorge, Turkana, Afar, Swartskraan, Egypt and its pyramids, the West African states of Ghana, Mali and Songhai, the Swahili towns of the Coast of East Africa, the Zimbabwe ruins of the southern part of Africa, the artworks of Benin as well as the Buganda and Zulu kingdoms are all part of the continent's rich past.
The Kipsaraman community museum, which has played an instrumental role in carrying out research of the country's cultural heritage by collecting material and preserving it for posterity, needs support.
The same applies to the Kabarnet National Museum of Kenya, which has come out in a big way to promote research of the people's ancient past, conflict resolution mechanisms and development in the central part of the expansive Rift Valley province.
Their research efforts in heritage sites such as the Lukeino and Ngorora formations, Kapturin and the Mpesida beds could greatly develop eco-tourism and promote children's education.
Carrying out research on palaeontological and archaeological heritage as well as the communities' ethnobotanic and ethnozoological knowledge will undoubtedly help them to develop and derive benefits from tourism and biodiversity conservation.
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