Wasous

A team of scientists led by Mohamed Sahnouni, archaeologist at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), has just published a paper in the journal Science which breaks with the paradigm that the cradle of Humankind lies in East Africa, based on the archaeological remains found at sites in the region of Ain Hanech (Algeria), the oldest currently known in the north of Africa.

Archaeological excavation at Ain Boucherit, Algeria [Credit: Mathieu Duval]

For a long time, East Africa has been considered the place of origin of the earliest hominins and lithic technology, because up to now, very little was known about the first hominin occupation and activities in the north of the continent. Two decades of field and laboratory research directed by Dr. Sahnouni have shown that ancestral hominins actually made stone tools in North Africa that are near contemporary with the earliest known stone tools in East Africa dated to 2.6 million years.

These are stone artifacts and animal bones bearing marks of cutting by stone tools, with an estimated chronology of 2.4 and 1.9 million years, respectively, found at two levels at the sites of Ain Boucherit (within the Ain Hanech study area), which were dated using Paleomagnetism, Electron Spin Resonance (ESR), and the Biochronology of large mammals excavated together with the archaeological materials.

Fossils of animals such as pigs, horses and elephants, from very ancient sites, have been used by the paleontologist Jan van der Made, of the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid, to corroborate the ages yielded by Paleomagnetism, obtained by the CENIEH geochronologist Josep Parés, and ESR, found by Mathieu Duval, of Griffith University.

Members of Ain Hanech team excavating at Ain Boucherit [Credit: Sahnouni et al., 2018]

The artifacts of Ain Boucherit were manufactured of locally available limestone and flint and include faces worked into choppers, polyhedra and subspheroids, as well as sharp-edged cutting tools used to process animal carcasses. These artifacts are typical of the Oldowan stone technology known from 2.6-1.9 million-year-old sites in East Africa, although those from Ain Boucherit show subtle variations.

"The lithic industry of Ain Boucherit, which is technologically similar to that of Gona and Olduvai, shows that our ancestors ventured into all corners of Africa, not just East Africa. The evidence from Algeria changes the earlier view that East Africa was the cradle of Humankind. Actually, the whole of Africa was the cradle of humankind," states Sahnouni, leader of the Ain Hanech project.

Ain Boucherit is one of the few archaeological sites in Africa which has provided evidence of bones with associated marks of cutting and percussion in situ with stone tools, which shows unmistakably that these ancestral hominins exploited meat and marrow from animals of all sizes and skeletal parts, which implied skinning, evisceration and defleshing of upper and intermediate extremities.

Two examples of stone tools from Ain Boucherit. An Oldowan core from which sharp-edged cutting flakes were removed (left). Sharp-edged cutting flake that may be used for butchery activities on the bones (right) [Credit: Mohamed Sahnouni]

Isabel Cáceres, taphonomist at the IPHES, has commented that "the effective use of sharp-edged tools at Ain Boucherit suggests that our ancestors were not mere scavengers. It is not clear at this moment whether they hunted, but the evidence clearly shows that they were successfully competing with carnivores and enjoyed first access to animal carcasses."

At this moment, the most important question is who made the stone tools discovered in Algeria. Hominin remains have still not been found in North Africa which are contemporary with the earliest stone artifacts. As a matter of fact, nor have any hominins yet been documented in direct association with the first stone tools known from East Africa.

Nevertheless, a recent discovery in Ethiopia has shown the presence of early Homo dated to 2.8 million years, most likely the best candidate also for the materials from East and North Africa.

A small bovid bone with stone tool cutmarks [Credit: Isabel Caceres]

Scientists thought for a long time that the hominins and their material culture originated in the Great Rift Valley in East Africa. Surprisingly, the earliest known hominin, dated to 7.0 million years, and the 3.3 million years Australopithecus bahrelghazali, have been discovered in Chad, in the Sahara, 3000 km from the rift valleys in the east of Africa.

As Sileshi Semaw, scientist at the CENIEH and a co-author of this paper, explains that the hominins contemporary with Lucy (3.2 million years), were probably roamed over the Sahara, and their descendants might have been responsible for leaving these archaeological puzzles now discovered in Algeria, that are near contemporaries of those of East Africa.

"Future research will focus on searching for human fossils in the nearby Miocene and Plio-Pleistocene deposits, looking for the tool-makers and even older stone tools," concludes Sahnouni.

Source: Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) [November 30, 2018]

When President Emmanuel Macron of France received a report he had commissioned on the restitution of African treasures, he wasted no time in announcing that the Quai Branly Museum in Paris would return 26 objects, looted by French colonial forces in 1892, to Benin.

Three large royal statues of the Kingdom of Dahomey on display at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris. President Emmanuel Macron of France announced on Friday that 26 items taken by force from the kingdom would be returned to Benin [Credit: Philippe Wojazer/Reuters]

But that was as far as the president went in publicly endorsing the report on Friday. Its authors, Bénédicte Savoy of France and Felwine Sarr of Senegal, recommend that all objects removed without consent from Africa and sent to France be permanently returned if the countries of origin ask for them.

Mr. Macron instead assigned his culture and foreign ministers to help fulfill an objective he set a year ago: to ensure that the cultural treasures of sub-Saharan Africa be accessible in Africa through restitutions, but also exhibitions, exchanges and loans. He also called for an international conference in early 2019 on the return of African artifacts.

In Europe, the restitution announcement drew tepid reactions from museum directors, as it sets a tricky precedent. Leaders of cultural institutions were quick to emphasize that Mr. Macron was speaking for France and France alone, but acknowledged that his actions and pronouncements on African heritage had energized and accelerated discussions on the subject elsewhere.

In Africa, the announcement was met with a mix of enthusiasm and caution.

The restitution of 26 objects to Benin “does not change the policy of the British Museum, nor legislation in Great Britain,” said Hartwig Fischer, the director of the London institution, which has 73,000 objects from sub-Saharan Africa in its collections, many obtained in colonial times. The museum has been in a decades-long dispute with Greece over the so-called Elgin marbles, which came from the Parthenon, and the governor of Easter Island requested last week the return of Hoa Hakananai’a, a statue that is among the British Museum’s most popular items.

Mr. Fischer said that while the British Museum’s trustees were open to all forms of cooperation, “the collections have to be preserved as whole.”

He recognized that Mr. Macron’s announcement would “intensify the debate” about access, and would contribute to “the next dimension of cooperation” as African countries develop their cultural and museum infrastructure.

King Ghezo’s throne from Abomey, which dates from the early 19th century, is among the items France will return, Mr. Macron said [Credit: Gerard Julien/AFP/Getty Images]

Hartmut Dorgerloh, the director of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, a giant museum of non-Western art set to open next year, said in an interview that Mr. Macron’s pledge to return the 26 objects had made issues of Africa’s heritage “more obvious, more visible and also more urgent.” In the future, he said, European museums would “have to return” objects in some cases, while in others, the inclusion of artifacts in collections would have to be viewed as “the result of European or global history.”

“How far back will you go? Until Roman times?” he said. “Because many items in Rome were robbed somewhere in Greece or in ancient Egypt.”

The objects that Mr. Macron is giving back to Benin are a star attraction of the Quai Branly Museum. Seized when French colonial forces ransacked the capital of the 300-year-old Kingdom of Dahomey, they were royal treasures that the fleeing king left behind: statues, thrones, and even the carved polychrome doors of his palace.

Although the report by Ms. Savoy and Mr. Sarr advises against measures such as long-term loans, Mr. Macron has spoken favorably in the past of “temporary restitution.” One example of the kind of cooperation that Mr. Macron could be looking for is the Benin Dialogue Group, which includes representatives from Nigeria and from major European museums that own treasures of the Kingdom of Benin, in what is now southern Nigeria.

Those artifacts — mostly sculptures and relief plaques — were looted from royal palaces during a British expedition in 1897. They were taken to Britain or sold on the open market, and eventually ended up in museums in Europe and the United States. Some are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Edo State in Nigeria hopes to open a museum by 2021 to house several hundred of the artifacts, lent short-term by the British Museum, among others.

Doors from a Kingdom of Dahomey palace, on display at the Quai Branly Museum. The items had been buried underground when the kingdom was ransacked by French colonial forces in the 19th century [Credit: Michel Euler/Associated Press]

Prince Kum’a Ndumbe III of the Duala people in Cameroon, who runs AfricAvenir International, a nonprofit that calls for the restitution of artifacts taken without consent, said that the French report was “the first step in the right direction.” He added that such a political commitment had been awaited since Cameroon and much of the rest of Francophone Africa gained independence from France in 1960.

“This is not just about the return of African art,” he said. “When someone’s stolen your soul, it’s very difficult to survive as a people.”

He invited Britain and Germany to follow the French example and commission their own restitution reports.

Stéphane Martin, president of the Quai Branly Museum, which has 70,000 objects from sub-Saharan Africa in its collections, said in an interview with the French daily Le Figaro that last week’s report was “a bad answer to the courageous question posed by the president.” While restitution was “not a word that I’m scandalized by,” he added, there are “other ways to engage in cultural cooperation with Africa.”

In a separate interview with Europe 1 radio on Sunday, Mr. Martin said it was he who had suggested that the 26 objects from his museum be returned to Benin. “Museums must not be hostages to the painful history of colonization,” he said.

Mr. Martin did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this article.

Plaques that form part of the Benin Bronzes on show at the British Museum in London. The plaques were taken by British troops in 1897 [Credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images]

Mr. Fischer of the British Museum described the French report as “a radical proposal” that made a “moral argument” against colonialism, whereby “everything that took place under the conditions of colonialism is eligible for restitution.” He also noted that Mr. Macron’s statement on Friday was “much more nuanced” than the report, and left open the door for options other than returning objects.

The ball is now in the court of France’s culture minister and foreign minister, who have been asked to bring together African and European museum managers and cultural professionals to ensure that works of art circulate not only among the major museums of the world — which hold 90 percent to 95 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s cultural heritage, according to the report — but also on the African continent.

The Paris conference next year will be a test of that process.

Sindika Dokolo, a businessman from the Democratic Republic of Congo who runs an art foundation in Angola and who has bought back looted African art, said the French president’s restitution offer had “no precedent.”

“Macron has opened a Pandora’s box,” he said.

At the same time, Mr. Dokolo urged African leaders to respond quickly, before a change of government or mood in France — to “put their foot in the door before it closes.”

Author: Farah Nayeri | Source: The New York Times [November 27, 2018]