It can get pretty hot here in Turkana, so this weekend the students made two separate trips to the massive East African rift lake to cool off and take a well-deserved break from their first module. On Friday and after a week full of lectures, lab activities, and assignments, the whole group loaded up in [...]
Classroom Relocation Project A new development arises: The day after Alan and Saffron moved the students out of their old classroom and into the dining hall, the local primary school received food rations from the government. (Up until now, the school hadn’t received any rations for three months; hence, the building had been abandoned.) This [...]
After a few classes, lectures, and labs, it was time for the students to try out their new skills in the field! TBI Turkwel is situated on the banks of the Turkwel river, right on the cusp of some rocky outcrops with sediments dating to around 3 to 4 million years old. Tuesday morning, the [...]
Welcome to our second blog post! The students have now arrived at Turkwel, the Turkana Basin Institute Research facility on the West side of lake Turkana. Before we made our way out here, we spent our remaining time at Mpala studying the ecology of African bushlands. The students listening to a lecture by Dr. [...]
Karibu! Welcome to Kenya! Beautiful Wildebeest Ecolodge outside of Nairobi, where the students stayed their first night in Kenya (photo credit: Evelyn Glaze) On Sunday, June 4th, our group of students arrived in Nairobi after their flights from the USA and Australia. With their arrival, the 6-week long TBI Origins Summer Field School [...]
A Tour of TBI Last week, students took a tour of the Turkana Basin Institute for the opportunity to see what resources TBI uses, understand what makes the campus so unique, and discover what materials are available to be used in their projects. The first stop was the energy systems of the campus. TBI is [...]
MPALA TO TBI After entering the TBI plane, the students flew north towards Ileret to reach the TBI facility. On the way, they saw new horizons and different landscapes that surprised them: remnants of volcanic reactions, a sea of sand that layers the land, and Lake Turkana. When they arrived in Ileret, the students were [...]
As most people are enjoying the beach and sunshine in the US, some Stony Brook students took a long shot and came to the shores of Lake Turkana, Kenya. They are here for the brand-new Global Innovation Field School! The Global Innovation summer program is organized by the College of Engineering & Applied Sciences, Stony [...]
It is finally the end of the Archaeology module and our field school students have learned a lot about stone tools. Now it is time to put them in good use! Cracking nuts using a hammer stone and an anvil is just the beginning of technology. To convince ourselves that the stone flakes we made are capable [...]
A major aspect and problem of archaeological work is the preservation of sites. Archaeological sites are prone to natural forces such as weathering along with human acts such as robbery and vandalism. To understand the problems facing current archaeological sites, the Origins Field School students participated in a cultural management project, where they not only [...]
As the field school comes close to its end, students finally had the opportunity to experience how different pieces of information can be put together to tell a compelling story of human history. And we do it the TBI style: in the field! Equipped with all kinds of digging tools ranging from trowels to buckets, [...]
The TBI Turkwel campus has one of the best outlook points around the area: the roof of the research labs. From there, several landmarks in the region are clearly visible. Towards the south, there are two peaks barely noticeable above the horizon. They are in the area known as Lothagam, geologically one of the most [...]
Now that our field school students have gained a good understanding of how early stone tools are made, it is time to find some stone tools in the field! And that is what the students have been waiting for! The Origins Field School has a tradition of visiting one of the most well-known hominin sites [...]
The students have arrived at Turkwel for their final adventure of The Origins Field School, the Archaeology module. For this, we are joined by Dr. Elisabeth Hildebrand from Stonybrook University who studies the beginnings of agriculture and herding in Africa. She has also done research in East Africa area for over 10 years! Dr. [...]
As curious beings, we often question where we came from and how we came to be. We used to think of our evolutionary tree as a straight branch, with an animal that looked like a chimp furthest back, a half chimp half man transitional species, and then us. However, as the field of paleoanthropology progresses, [...]
It is now the second week of the human evolution module of the Origins Field School and our dedicated students are ready for a new set of adventures! In the classroom, we have been learning about how different evolutionary theories have been developed around a rather limited hominin fossil record. With all the gaps in [...]
When Richard Leakey invited Sarah, Duchess of York, to visit the Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya their plan was to talk about humankind's place in the world. Sarah did not know that she would be visiting one of the places most affected by the devastating drought in northern Kenya just before World Water Day. [...]
Families are considered functional units of a typical human society. Depending on the geographic and cultural origin, families can come in different shapes and sizes. The most straightforward way to relate all the members of an extended family is to draw a family tree. Most people know their immediate relatives such as a parent or [...]
The moment we have all been waiting for has arrived, the human evolution module. For the module, Dr. Matthew Borths from the University of Ohio joins us to tell the story of our own evolutionary origins. Dr. Borths studies changes in African ecosystems, particularly as they relate to ape evolution, throughout the Miocene. He was [...]
As paleontology neared the end, students were able to demonstrate what they learned throughout the course by designing research experiments. These projects focused on a wide array of paleontological methods and topics including excavation, tooth wear, and how an animal's chewing rate correlates with its body size. The students worked quite hard on these projects [...]