Middle Awash

The Middle Awash is an archaeological paläoanthropologischer and place along the River Awash in the Afar Depression in Ethiopia.

Here the remains of numerous individuals of the Hominini from the Pleistocene and Miocene as well as some of the oldest Oldowan were stone tools and pieces of fired clay found. The latter serve as - controversial - evidence for the use of fire; a secure reference with burned human remains of food is the first time Gesher Benot with Ya'aqov in northern Israel, which is in conjunction with Homo erectus and is about 790,000 years old. The oldest finds are Hominini - nearly 6 million years old, and thus temporally very close to that epoch, during which the lineages of chimps and humans parted.

The forthcoming here today sediments were originally deposited in lakes and rivers. The carbonates contained therein have a lower carbon isotope ratio. It can be concluded that the climate at the time of the late Miocene, in contrast to today, moist, and that the area was covered by open forest or savanna forests. Further evidence for such vegetation are the fossilized remains of vertebrates like the rat tube, which were combined with the pre-human fossils have been found. This area was also characterized by recurrent eruptions. The resulting induced dissection through gaps and cracks in the ground, probably allowed the emergence of different ecological niches that could be subsequently colonized by different species of vertebrates and today facilitates the radiometric dating of the finds.

Among the important hominin fossils have been found in the Middle Awash include:

Awash River Volcano Hadar, Ethiopia Science (journal) Digital Object Identifier
576405
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