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With Your Permission – Lady Lucy and Mrs. Ples

When I travelled in Ethiopia I met Lucy or better the skeleton of her. Lucy lived 3.2 million years ago, was named after the Beatles song (“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”) which was apparently playing continuously in the excavation camp in 1974. Finding her was a sensation as the skeleton shows evidence of small skull capacity akin to that of apes and of bipedal upright walk akin to that of humans.

Few years later, close to Johannesburg (South Africa), I bumped into Mrs. Ples. She lived more than 2 million years back and could be considered as the grand-grand-grand-…mother of all of us. UNESCO named the caves in the Gauteng Province a World Heritage Site and if you ever happen to be there, don’t miss the Maropeng Visitor Centre. Even if museums are normally not your cup of tea, you will enjoy the exhibits and the architecture of the building. It was there where I took the photo and smiled back at the Bavarian man surrounded by portraits from around the world.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 25th, 2012 at 7:18 PM. It is filed under People and tagged with South Africa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.