Middle Awash

The Middle Awash is an archaeological site along the Awash River in Ethiopia's Afar Depression. A number of fossils of the earliest hominins, particularly of the Australopithecines, as well as some of the oldest known Olduwan stone artifacts, have been found at the site—all of late Miocene, the Pliocene, and the very early times, that is, about 5.6 million years ago (mya) to 2.5 mya. It is broadly thought that the divergence of the lines of the earliest humans (hominins) and of chimpanzees (hominids) was completed near the beginning of that time range, or sometime between seven and five mya. However, the larger community of scientists provide several estimates for periods of divergence that imply a greater range for this event, see CHLCA: human-chimpanzee split.

A recent find of Australopithecus anamensis is dated to about 4.2 million years ago, which separates it only 200 thousand years from an earlier fossil of the more primitive Ardipithecus ramidus (at 4.4 million years ago). Australopithecus garhi fossils are dated as recent as the very early , or 2.5 mya; fossils of Homo erectus in the Daka member at the site (at 1 mya) and Homo sapiens idaltu (at 160 ka ago) are found in the middle and late Pleistocene. And patches of fire-baked clay, disputed as evidences of the controlled use of fire, are also found in that later period.

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