Meet Dinkenesh, the (not so) Hidden Treasure of Ethiopia

Kangsen Feka Wakai (Originally published in Mshale)

Dinkenesh’s living quarters on the second floor of the Houston Museum of Natural Science is part of a 9,000 square-foot abode befitting a guest of her stature.  Hers is a journey that began in antiquity in a site she might be unable to recognize or remember – a place we humans call Ethiopia.

These days, Dinkenesh – or Lucy, as some like to call the 3.2 million-year-old fossil, the oldest ever found – slumbers in a glass casing under the watchful stare of an armed city of Houston police officer.  Houstonians owe her presence here to the Ethiopian government, museum authorities, and the exhibition’s financial underwriters. 

In other words, 2008 has been Africa’s year in Houston.  In fact, this year, iFest, the city’s annual international festival’s theme was ‘Out of Africa’ with a focus on Dinkenesh’s homeland of Ethiopia. 

This year Houston is retelling her story. It is Ethiopia’s year but it is Dinkenesh’s presence at the museum that has fascinated some and irritated others. Whatever the case, she is here and her coming is noteworthy. 

But, the raison d’être for Dinkenesh in Houston transcends her skeletal remains in the well-guarded glass case. It is an opportunity for post-millennium Ethiopia – the nation/state – to shine in the limelight of glory as the cradle of humankind.      

“Lucy’s Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia”, as the exhibition has been named, offers – not just to the scientific novice – but to the general public an insightful and visually refreshing tour of Ethiopia’s five thousand year history.   

It is a tour Dirk Van Tuerehout, the museum’s curator of anthropology, is all too eager to give. Van Tuerehout has been collecting and exhibiting fragments of human culture for the museum for the last nine years. 

In Lucy’s case, Van Tuerehout doubles as guide in an attempt to explain, in layman’s terms, the connection between modern man and the demystifying pre-historic puzzle that is Lucy.  You see, Lucy is not quite human. She is a hominid. According to scientists, she might be the first amongst other hominids to have walked on twos, thus making her humankind’s common ancestor.

Her remains were discovered in 1974 by scientist Donald Johanson and his student Tom Gray on a sweltering afternoon in Hadar, northern Ethiopia. That night the pair joined by others celebrated to The Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” The pair attributes the origin of the name Lucy to that night. Ethiopians named her Dinkenesh, which in Amharic stands for “you are beautiful.”   

For a more comprehensive understanding of Ethiopian history, Van Tuerehout provides a map and a timeline, which is divided into two eras: a long stretch constituting the prehistoric, and a much shorter era of recorded history. According to him this enables the viewer to understand the history of Ethiopia from both a chronological and geographical point of view. 

“Because the story is one of early humans and that’s one of a few stories, but of course that story did not only develop in Ethiopia but in other parts of Africa like Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa,” Van Tuerehout says. “That is why we identify those countries in the map as well.”

He then explains that the timeline covers seven million years of pre-history and different aspects of human development in different parts of Africa with a focus on Ethiopia. The map and timeline answer the “Where?” and “When?” of the narrative.

“What we are seeing is a series of photographs on top of the timeline where we have a rendering of what Africa looked liked according to scientists going back six, five, four, three million years ago,” says Van Tuerehout.

The exhibit is divided into two parts: the first part beginning in the Northern Highlands where the ancient Kingdom of Aksum was conceived. (It is the same kingdom that would later bring forth the Solomonic dynasty of scriptural fame that ruled a swath of what includes Eritrea and portions of Yemen).

The second part of the exhibit examines how different species of early hominids existed in the landscape now known as Ethiopia. 

Van Tuerehout then explains that Africa’s claim to the coveted throne of humankind’s cradle is based on findings such as Dinkenesh and a generation’s worth of scientific research.

“The focus is and remains Africa because we have the fossil records in Africa being the oldest; we also have the representation of a chimp identifying our closest living non-human relative, genetically speaking – but they [chimps] themselves and their ancestors have only been and are found only in Africa,” he says. “We have genetics and fossil records pointing to Africa being the cradle of humankind.”

In spite of all the excitement, pageantry and most of all, the educational value of the exhibition, the decision to transport Dinkenesh from its home in Addis Ababa to Houston has drawn the ire of both prominent scientists and many members of Houston’s Ethiopian community. 

Rich Potts, director of human origins at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, is amongst those who voiced their concerns about the exhibit. 

“I don’t know of a single Ethiopian colleague who is in favor of Lucy traveling,” Potts says.

The Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History declined to participate in the touring exhibition for ethical reasons.

Members of the Ethiopian Community Organization in Houston (ECOH), a non-profit organization that has been serving the Ethiopians immigrants in the area since 1980, are also boycotting the exhibition.  ECOH’s chairperson, Gigar Asfaw says that when the debate about whether it was appropriate to transport Dimkenesh all the way from Ethiopian for the current exhibition began in 2005, ECOH made its position clear to all parties involved including the authorities at the museum

“We felt Lucy’s remains were so fragile,” says Asfaw. 

ECOH was concerned that the Ethiopian government and museum authorities insisted on using the original instead of a replica for public viewing. 

“Egypt and other countries that have historic artifacts tend to use replicas when they travel outside,” says Asfaw. “Why did the Ethiopian government decide to bring the original remains of Lucy?”

The organization also wanted to know if there were guarantees that Lucy would return to Ethiopia without any foul play. Another complaint was that Lucy had only been exhibited twice in her homeland. By using the original fossils, Asfaw says, the authorities were not only compromising a national and global treasure, but were also not getting back enough in return. 

Van Tuerehout, the curator, says he is not insensitive to these concerns.  But he says that Ethiopia has been home to all three major religions – Christianity, Islam and Judaism – making the country important in the human narrative.  For that reason alone, he says, Lucy must be seen.   

The current exhibition will run until Sep. 1.

Mshale’s Omar Yousuf contributed to this report.

Kangsen Feka Wakai resides in Houston. He was a spring 2008 Houston Association of Black Journalists fellow.  He is a recent recipient of a Poets & Writers Inc. writer’s grant.  His collection of poems, “Fragmented Melodies” (Langaa Publishers) is available on www.amazon.com.

Comments

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