 Earlier, 100,000 elephants lived in Kenya and we didn't have any noteworthy problem with it. The problem that we have is not that there are now more elephants. |
| Scientific innovations continually provide us with new means of analyzing the finds. |
| Paleoanthropology is not a science that ends with the discovery of a bone. One has to have the original to work with. It is a life-long task. |
| Sadly, I am not able to take part in the fieldwork myself so much anymore, as both of my legs were amputated following an airplane crash twelve years ago. |
| The problem is that during the 1980s, a decade of heavy poaching, the elephants retreated to safer areas. And now people have moved into the corridors once used by the elephants. |
| A number of scientists with greatly different backgrounds can come up with completely different assessments. The discussions or controversies are endless. Once a year, we try to bring the most important discoverers together to exchange their experiences and knowledge. |
| We hope to find more pieces of the puzzle which will shed light on the connection between this upright, walking ape, our early ancestor, and modern man. |
| We are concerned that, in a few years time, this place of discovery, with its wealth of human fossils, the like of which can be found nowhere else in the world, could be completely destroyed. |
| I would hazard a guess that we have found fossilized human remains of at least a thousand different specimens in South and East Africa, more or less complete at that. I think this is where the prelude to human history was primarily played out. |
| The land is not in the least bit fertile and yet the cattle herds grow larger and larger. A cow represents capital investment here. |
| Elephants can live to an age of up to 70 or 80 years and they have a good memory. It could be they come across an area that is experiencing a drought. Then they continue on their path and run into people. |
| We think that groups of between 30 and 40 early men would have settled in an area measuring a hundred square kilometers. |
| It is virtually impossible to control Northern Kenya, which is populated chiefly by migrant nomads. |
| Along the borders to Ethiopia and Somalia, anarchy reigns, the police and military have retreated quite some distance. |
| I can't think of any other region in the world which is such a vast source of fossils. |
| To investigate the history of man's development, the most important finds are, of course, hominid fossils. |
| Whether or not all this came to pass in an East African ditch, I wouldn't like to say. Perhaps it happened in North Africa or further west, but Africa was definitely the place. |
| Primates need good nutrition, to begin with. Not only fruits and plants, but insects as well. |
| The elephants were being slaughtered in masses. Some were even killed in the vicinity of big tourist hotels. |
| I, too, am convinced that our ancestors came from Africa. |
