Archaeology: from Botswana to Toulouse, the quest for the origins of humanity
With their partners from the CNRS and the Toulouse laboratory TRACES, archaeologists and geologists from Botswana are looking for the oldest fossils of humanity on their lands in southern Africa. The prehistorians of Occitania welcomed them for a week of scientific exchanges and made them discover the main decorated caves of the region as well as the work of the teams of the Museum of Toulouse.
At the Toulouse Museum, there is visible wealth. Emerged from bygone times, the impressive pterosaur thus flies over the elephant, from the hall where the smile of paleontologist Francis Duranthon, owner of the place, welcomes you… But there is also the hidden treasure: these reserves of an institution listing “2 , 5 million specimens,” recalls curator Alexandre Mille. From the taxidermy lab, where a skeleton is resuscitated into the living image of a bird… to the basement where the fossils are stored in secure rooms, the head of collections and conservation guides the visit of Stephen Mogotsi and his team of the National Museum of Botswana, this Wednesday.
Local development, here and elsewhere
Bones, skulls, vertebrae… 17 million years ago, the ancestor of the elephant lived in a Gascony in the tropical jungle then tells this fossil of Deinotherium found in Montreal-du-Gers. While much closer to us, modern man – who left Africa around -80,000 – painted these Pyrenean pebbles at Mas d’Azil 10,000 years ago. Only here… between the two, there were of course also the first hominids, born in southern Africa nearly 4 million years ago, ancestors of humanity whose soil in Botswana in all probability preserves remaining traces to discover on the side of the Gewihaba caves. In doing so? From the Museum of Toulouse to the Museum of Gaborone – capital of a country with a population of 2.3 million for a territory larger than France – it was then a common universe that brought together European and African researchers, over the questions: the one who draws a single planet for the same humanity whose shared past must illuminate the present and the future. Philosophically, ethically but without despising the necessities of everyday life either…
“We visited Mas d’Azil on Monday. The wealth of paleontology, fossils and all the work done on it, the conservation of objects, all of this is a source of inspiration for us, like the local development that archeology allows through tourism”, smiles Oaitsé Ledimo, Botswana’s head of geology department, also stresses the importance of the “development of scientific methods” for the future of his country. The subject at the heart of their visit, thanks to this week organized with the CNRS and the Toulouse laboratory TRACES (Archaeological work and research on cultures and societies) included since 2016 in “Human Origin”, a project requiring a little backtracking. .. To properly grasp the issues.
Small foot for man, big leap for humanity
In 2014 and 2015, scientific publications on the fossils of a hominid nicknamed “Little Foot” – Petit-Pied – upset the knowledge we had until now of the origins of man. Discovered in 1974 in North-East Africa, in Ethiopia, the famous Australopithecus Lucy is no longer the only ancestor with her 3.18 million years. 500,000 years before her, Little Foot was already walking upright, in southern Africa, 6,000 km to the southwest… Considerable leap in space and time, so for this little foot suddenly tearing the map of a humanity that is deactivating hitherto born on the great East African rift.
But this discovery… It is in particular the work of the geomorphologist and geoarchaeologist Laurent Bruxelles (Inrap/CNRS) that made it possible. Trained in Montpellier, this specialist in limestone massifs with multiple cavities dug by water, karsts, was called in 2006 by South Africa to help date Little Foot and he was able to deactivate only the layers of sediment where lay his fossilized bones were much older than initially estimated, confirmed by cosmogenic dating. But as a landscape historian, he knows the soil. And he is also convinced that other karsts in southern Africa have trapped other hominid fossils in their sediments. Seconded to the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in 2016, he will therefore launch the Human Origins project as part of the TRACES laboratory and go to explore possible deposits in Namibia with Francis Duranthon, his colleague CNRS paleontologist Jean-Baptiste Fourvel, l archaeologist Marc Jarry and geoarchaeologist Grégory Dandurant. A few later missions?
“The CNRS launched the Africa plan. Botswana has been a partner since last year and is very motivated by Human Origins. Our first mission was immediately validated by the authorities, with the provision of personnel and equipment, which also allowed us to do on-the-job training. The enthusiasm is palpable”, explains Laurent Bruxelles. “For us, this exchange of ideas, this joint work, is a great opportunity and the start of a great adventure because there is still so much to discover”, confirms Stephen Mogotsi. “To be discovered and made known”, he continues, because “research is only valid if it is shared and disseminated to the public”, he underlines. Without evading the other major interest for his country: the future archaeological notoriety of an essential Botswana in the history of humanity and… its dividends for the local economy, thanks to archaeology, as well as he was able to see it with his team in Occitanie, at Mas as in Pech-Merle or Niaux.
“Excavating, finding, studying, preserving and presenting: it is a whole. Because we must also ask ourselves the question of the benefit for the people. We, in Botswana, want to educate them on the richness of their heritage so that they But also because this heritage will be able to improve their daily life according to the activities for them. he concluded.