Origins and evolution

A voy­age back in time to the ori­gins of mankind; a voy­age into the African con­ti­nent. This is what Cos­mo­caixa's ex­hi­bi­tion, El bres­sol de la hu­man­i­tat, pro­poses, which will be on show until Jan­u­ary next year. The col­lec­tion is ded­i­cated to the evo­lu­tion of human be­ings, and based on the ar­chae­o­log­i­cal and pa­le­on­to­log­i­cal ex­plo­rations of Oldu­vai Gorge in the Ngoron­goro re­serve (Tan­za­nia), con­sid­ered a key point of time in un­der­stand­ing the ori­gin of our an­ces­tors. The voy­age takes us through the ge­ol­ogy and ecol­ogy of the Great Rift Val­ley and of­fers a vi­sion of the cur­rent state of pa­le­on­tol­ogy, while re­flect­ing on many of the ques­tions which re­main unan­swered.

Elisa Duran, Deputy di­rec­tor gen­eral of the Fun­dació La Caixa, says that “this ex­hi­bi­tion is the star of Cos­mo­caixa's sea­son. The his­tory of mankind has al­ways had a promi­nent place in the cen­tre and, in this case, the sam­ple goes back four mil­lion years”. The ex­hi­bi­tion “shows the work of ex­perts at sites in Africa, and some very re­cent find­ings that back Dar­win's the­ory that the ori­gin of hu­man­ity was in Africa. For a long time it was thought that the ori­gin of hu­man­ity was in Eu­rope, then Java and even China. Today, the the­sis of our African ori­gin is al­most unan­i­mously ac­cepted.”

Ex­hibits come from the Na­tional Mu­seum of Tan­za­nia, Dar es Salaam, and the ex­ca­va­tions of the Oldu­vai Palean­thro­po­logu Pro­ject (TOPPP). Audax Mab­ulla, di­rec­tor of her­itage and the Na­tional Mu­seum of Tan­za­nia, stressed the ex­cep­tional na­ture of the ex­hi­bi­tion be­cause it is the first time that many of the pieces have left our coun­try and most likely, this will not hap­pen again.”

Ac­cord­ing to arche­ol­o­gist En­rique Baque­dano, the Rift Val­ley is “one of the most spec­tac­u­lar sources of knowl­edge of the ori­gin of hu­mans. It is im­por­tant to know where we come from and how we have ar­rived to what we are. Until now, we have never known so much about the ori­gin of man.”

Among other jew­els, vis­i­tors will be able to see orig­i­nal pieces and re­pro­duc­tions mod­elled from 3D scans show­ing the re­mains of fos­sil ho­minids, such as the fa­mous Lucy, the first Aus­tralophite­cus afaren­sis, dis­cov­ered in 1974, the Turkana Boy and the Taung Child.

The show will also pro­vide a mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tion with an audio guide in four lan­guages (Cata­lan, Span­ish, Eng­lish and French), pro­vid­ing extra in­for­ma­tion about the ex­hi­bi­tion. Mean­while, fam­i­lies and younger vis­i­tors will be able to take part in trea­sure hunts, and try their hand in a lab­o­ra­tory that re­con­structs the his­tory of our an­ces­tors based on fos­sils.