ABSTRACT
Addis Ababa is a city of incredible contrasts. Just before I finished this book, I attended an exhibition of modern impressionistic Ethiopian art at one of the city's cultural centres. Two blocks from the centre is the Natural History Museum and in a glass case there are the skeletal remains of the oldest known member of the human race. “Denktesh”, to use her Ethiopian name, lived in the Rift Valley, near Addis Ababa, about 4.5 million years ago. Some five to six million years ago, the first female of the species which eventually evolved into homo sapiens mutated in or close to the northern Rift Valley of Africa. As the species evolved, its survival and growth was crucially dependent upon the availability of food and water.
