Lucy, You got some 'splainin' to do!

We went to see the Natural History Museum in Addis this past weekend and saw the bones of Lucy, the oldest human. They are 2.5 Million years old and are grouped with other remains of similar age found in the Rift Valley of Ethiopia. Famous as she is, Lucy would not have been on the Australopithicus First Squad basketball team, as she was only 3 ft tall, but it was impressive nonetheless, to see her remains. They are not the real bones, of course, they are plaster casts. The real bones are stored away in climate controlled conditions, or so the sign said. We also got to see Emperor Haile Selassie's incredibly huge throne. You could easliy have seated five emperors in sort regal slumber party on that huge velvet bench. The throne for the Empress was much smaller, in comparison, but was much more heavily gold encrusted.

The museum also housed the crowns of the last five emperors. They must have done a lot of neck exercises as those things looked very heavy! Upstairs in the museum were housed many artifacts of life in ancient Ethiopia and some rather impressive art. Some of it was right out of the Joseph Stalin School for Government Artists as it was from the Derg era. Lots of heroic looking Ethiopians gaining control of the means of production while smashing the capitalist running dog type stuff. Outside they had one of the cannons used to defeat the Italian Army at Adowa in 1896, the only time and African army beat a European colonizing force, and the source of much native pride.

After our visit to the museum we went into the tukul (thatched roof hut) that housed the museum's cafe and had a coffee ceremony while watching a track and field meet on the television. Another good Sunday outing.