Frankfurt

On Tuesday, December 8, 2009, I got in touch with my ancestors, quite literally.

And I did not have to take a safari – that is Kiswahili for a journey, usually a long one – to Africa, the indisputable cradle of humankind. I took a short train journey from Sudbahnof to Bockenheimer Warte in Frankfurt west and, in 25 minutes flat, I was at home with the forebears of the human species at the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History.

The organisers of the Safari zum Urmenschen, a 1,000-square-metre journey inside the Wolfgang-Steubing-Halle, have laid out an elaborate display of fossils from millions of years back, many of them straight out of Africa, complete with their personal stories: where they lived, what they ate and their likely cause of death. I found a recreated excavation site, aided by cinematography. And then the journey took me through all the stages of development of the early humans all the way through bipedalism to production of tools, the evolution of the brain, the use of fire, the geographical dispersion of people and the formation of language and culture.

But everything there is labelled in German so I needed an English audio guide. It struck me that the Safari zum Urmenschen is targeting students although the Senckenberg press officer Doris von Eiff says they also hope to attract families and anybody interested in nature and natural sciences.

Whomever it targets, the exhibition is special, especially in the way it gives an overview on evolution and the all-important milestones. “The one thing which, in my view, is special is the authentic input from the Senckenberg scientists who are leading (or involved in) international field projects, mainly in Malawi but also along the East African region,” the press officer said. The forensic reconstruction of the skulls, showing clear differences between old and young, and male and female specimens, is commendable.

I felt quite at home, even posed for photos with homo ergaster, otherwise known as the “Turkana Boy,” who was discovered in 1984 in Turkana west. But I was rather fascinated by the fireplace on display, a recreation from many years before civilisation, yet it looks like a scene straight from my mother’s kitchen back in rural Kenya. Africa has kept some of the “technologies” used by our forebears who lived around Lake Turkana in prehistoric times. It was the same with the spears. One would still find them among the Turkana, although they also own submachine guns and AK-47 assault rifles, illegally of course. Going around looking at the meticulously laid out display, I thought of my compatriots Louis, Mary and Richard Leakey, who worked tirelessly to bring to light what lay buried deep in the Turkana basin and other parts of Africa. A celebrated archaeological team, the Leakeys took archaeology and, for that matter, evolution to new heights with their hominid discoveries in Africa.

Then I thought of Frederick Manthi, a researcher with the National Museums of Kenya who, in 2007, discovered a 10-million-year-old jaw bone of a humanlike creature and opened debate among palaeontologists as to whether homo habilis evolved into homo erectus—who eventually evolved into us—or they existed in the same period. The jury, as far as I know, is still out. I would have liked to interrogate the organisers of the exhibition on this matter and find out if the scientists from Senckenberg Forschungsinstitut, who have been conducting research into the origins of mankind, have any new discoveries but they were not there.

I was just contemplating this when two young women walked into the hall, excitedly talking in Kiswahili. I learnt that Ruth Nyambura and Silvia Nasieko, both Kenyans, are studying in the University in Frankfurt. They, too, were travelling back in time to our past. “Tulijua wewe ni mkenya tulipokuona tu (We knew you were Kenyan the moment we saw you,” Nyambura told me when I introduced myself. I wondered whether they noticed a close likeness between me and the fossil of Turkana Boy or they have a knack for recognising a Kenyan brother from a mile away.

I will remember this exhibition as the one place I met “my people” both dead and alive.