ABSTRACT
Africa is often called the continent of beginnings. Fossil and bone records there of the earliest humans go back more than 4 million years. Perhaps our early upright ancestor, Homo erectus, departed Africa on the long journey that eventually peopled the Earth. It now seems likely that every person today comes from a lineage that goes back to an ancient African. Innumerable cave paintings and petroglyphs, from Sahara to South Africa, provide clues to the beliefs and way of life of these age-old hominids.1
