From Ethiopia to Chile: a 7-Year Walk to Trace Man’s Global Migration

Fascinating!

A two-time Pulitzer Prize winning American writer and Journalist and National Geographic Fellow Paul Salopek is undertaking an ambitious expedition to retrace on foot the path our ancient ancestors traveled as they migrated across the world.

The Ethiopia-to-Chile walk — which took human ancestors some 50,000 years to make — is called Out of Eden and is sponsored by National Geographic, the Knight Foundation and the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, the American plans to write one major article a year with periodic updates every 100 miles or so.

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mtDNA Variation in East Africa

Language diversity in East Africa fits well with its complicated genetic history. In Fleming words, ‘‘Ethiopia by itself has more languages than all of Europe, even counting all the so-called dialects of the Romance family’’ (Fleming, 2006).

All African linguistic phyla are found in East Africa:

• Afro-Asiatic (AA)

• Nilo-Saharan,

• Niger-Congo

• Khoisan

Among them, AA is the most differentiated, being represented by three:

• Omotic

• Cushitic

• Semitic

of its six major clades:

• Chadic

• Berber

• Egyptian

Omotic and Cushitic are considered the deepest clades of AA, and both are found almost exclusively in the Horn of Africa, along with the linguistic relict Ongota that is traditionally assigned to the Cushitic family but whose classification is still widely debated (Fleming, 2006).

These observations are in agreement with a North-Eastern African origin of the AA languages, most probably in pre-Neolithic times

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The Best Guided Tours For 2013

The Telegraph – probably one of the few remaining descent, politically incorrect British newspapers/websites presents an attractive calendar of the best escorted world tours running in 2013.

Please come with me:

1. January we are in New Zealand
2. February in Iceland
3. March in Tanzania and Kenya
4. April in Japan
5. May in England
6. June in Russia
7. July in Britain and Ireland
8. August in the US of A

9. September we take the dreamliner to Addis Abeba

Dalol Depression – North East Ethiopia

One of the hot new destinations for 2013, Ethiopia may surprise you. Famous for its rock-hewn churches and ancient monasteries, it also boasts lush, dramatic scenery – in the Simien Mountains National Park, for example, where ibex, baboons and the rare Ethiopian wolf inhabit a landscape of jagged volcanic peaks and deep valleys.

The city of Axum is not only the legendary home of the Queen of Sheba but also the reputed final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant, believed to hold the tablets of stone bearing the Ten Commandments, which Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. Take a boat across Lake Tana to island monasteries filled with ancient manuscripts and beautiful frescoes. The trip ends in Lalibela, with its mysterious 700-year-old rock-cut churches. In late September the Meskel festival will be in full swing here, with dancing, feasting and a big bonfire all celebrating the discovery in the fourth century of the true cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified.

10. October we’ll be in Australia
11. November in Oman
12. December in Burma

Source: The Telegraph

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