Berhane Asfaw
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Berhane Asfaw (
Amharic Amharic ( or ; (Amharic: ), ', ) is an Ethiopian Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amharas, and also serves as a lingua franca for all oth ...
: በርሃነ አስፋው) (born August 22, 1954 in
Gondar Gondar, also spelled Gonder (Amharic: ጎንደር, ''Gonder'' or ''Gondär''; formerly , ''Gʷandar'' or ''Gʷender''), is a city and woreda in Ethiopia. Located in the North Gondar Zone of the Amhara Region, Gondar is north of Lake Tana on t ...
,
Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
) is an Ethiopian
paleontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...
of Rift Valley Research Service, who co-discovered human skeletal remains at Herto Bouri, Ethiopia later classified as ''
Homo sapiens idaltu Herto Man refers to the 154,000 - 160,000-year-old human remains (''Homo sapiens'') discovered in 1997 from the Upper Herto member of the Bouri Formation in the Afar Triangle, Ethiopia. The discovery of Herto Man was especially significant at t ...
'', proposed as an early
subspecies In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics ( morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all specie ...
of
anatomically modern humans Early modern human (EMH) or anatomically modern human (AMH) are terms used to distinguish '' Homo sapiens'' (the only extant Hominina species) that are anatomically consistent with the range of phenotypes seen in contemporary humans from exti ...
.


Early life

Asfaw's father was the Secretary General of Gondar and Berhane has five brothers and eight sisters. Asfaw was raised in the Kebele Hulet neighborhood in Gondar. He spent his free time riding a bike and playing football. He completed primary and secondary education in Gondar town, Ethiopia. When he was a 9th grade student, he was exposed to the field of human evolution a history teacher who read to the class about the discoveries of Zinjantohrpus (Australopithecus boisei) and ''Homo habilis'' by the Leakeys, published by the National Geographic Society. This information ignited his interest in the field of study.


Education

In 1972, Asfaw joined Addis Ababa University, and then Haile-Selassie I University, Alemaya Agricultural College campus, located about 500 kilometers away from Addis Ababa, in Harar town. Here he took Life Sciences as a first year student. In his second year, he joined the Geology Department of the Addis Ababa Science Campus, majoring in Geology and minoring in Chemistry. However, his University studies were interrupted because of the Ethiopian revolution in 1974. He later rejoined the University in 1978 and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Geology in 1980. He then joined the graduate program of the University of California at Berkeley in 1981, where his advisor was Professor J. Desmond Clark. His academic interest was to pursue and specialize in African Prehistory. Soon after he started taking different courses, especially that of Professor Tim White’s, his interest was rekindled in human biological evolution. Berhane was invited by Professor Desmond Clark to join Clark’s Middle Awash field research group. This exposure to fieldwork redefined his interest and he changed the focus of his field of study from African Prehistory to Physical Anthropology. His PhD thesis was supervised by Professor Tim White, and he graduated from Berkeley in 1989.


Career

Before attending Berkeley for graduate school, Asfaw had a one-month archaeological field experience with French archaeologist, Jean Chavaillon, at Melaka Konture in 1979. This was his first field experience where he saw abundant stone tools and fossilized bones excavated. He's a member of the
National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...
. Berhane has been working for the past 25 years as a private researcher at the Ethiopian Ministry of Culture, Centre for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage. He established the first research laboratory at the
National Museum of Ethiopia The National Museum of Ethiopia (NME), also referred to as the Ethiopian National Museum, is a national museum in Ethiopia. It is located in the capital, Addis Ababa, near the Addis Ababa University's graduate school. Overview The museum houses E ...
. Berhane spearheaded major archeological expeditions into Afar region that led to the ground breaking discoveries in human evolution. In 1981 he co-founded the Middle Awash Research Group. He faced considerable challenges during the
Derg The Derg (also spelled Dergue; , ), officially the Provisional Military Administrative Council (PMAC), was the military junta that ruled Ethiopia, then including present-day Eritrea, from 1974 to 1987, when the military leadership formally " ...
period when many of his colleagues were arrested and killed. In addition, Berhane was critical of the Derg's disregard of archeological sites when the Melka Wakena Dam was built in 1988 on a precious open archeological site. In 1992, his group discovered the earliest
Acheulean Acheulean (; also Acheulian and Mode II), from the French ''acheuléen'' after the type site of Saint-Acheul, is an archaeological industry of stone tool manufacture characterized by the distinctive oval and pear-shaped "hand axes" associated ...
in which the results were the cover feature in
Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
. He credits this major discovery in part to the
EPRDF The Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF; am, የኢትዮጵያ ሕዝቦች አብዮታዊ ዲሞክራሲያዊ ግንባር, translit=Ye’Ītiyop’iya Ḥizibochi Ābiyotawī Dīmokirasīyawī Ginibari) was an eth ...
bringing stability to Ethiopia thus allowing the research group to work in remote areas. The next major discovery was in 1997, when his group discovered ''
Australopithecus garhi ''Australopithecus garhi'' is a species of australopithecine from the Bouri Formation in the Afar Region of Ethiopia 2.6–2.5 million years ago (mya) during the Early Pleistocene. The first remains were described in 1999 based on several skele ...
''. The fossilized remains of ''
Homo sapiens idaltu Herto Man refers to the 154,000 - 160,000-year-old human remains (''Homo sapiens'') discovered in 1997 from the Upper Herto member of the Bouri Formation in the Afar Triangle, Ethiopia. The discovery of Herto Man was especially significant at t ...
'' were discovered at Herto Bouri near the Middle Awash. Over the years his excavations continued to find ''
Australopithecus anamensis ''Australopithecus anamensis'' is a hominin species that lived approximately between 4.2 and 3.8 million years ago and is the oldest known ''Australopithecus'' species, living during the Plio-Pleistocene era. Nearly one hundred fossil specimens ...
''White, Tim D.; WoldeGabriel, Giday; Asfaw, Berhane; Ambrose, Stan; Beyene, Yonas; Bernor, Raymond L.; Boisserie, Jean-Renaud; Currie, Brian; Gilbert, Henry; Haile-Selassie, Yohannes; Hart, William K.; Hlusko, Leslea J.; Howell, F. Clark; Kono, Reiko T.; Lehmann, Thomas; Louchart, Antoine; Lovejoy, C. Owen; Renne, Paul R.; Saegusa, Hauro; Vrba, Elisabeth S.; Wesselman, Hank; Suwa, Gen (13 April 2006). "Asa Issie, Aramis and the origin of Australopithecus". ''Nature'' 440 (7086): 883889. and ''
Homo erectus ''Homo erectus'' (; meaning "upright man") is an extinct species of archaic human from the Pleistocene, with its earliest occurrence about 2 million years ago. Several human species, such as '' H. heidelbergensis'' and '' H. antecessor' ...
'' as well as discovering five new species making Ethiopia the richest site of early human ancestry.


Honors and awards

* Foreign Associate Member of the National Academy of Sciences, USA; Since 2008. * Member of the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) since 2010 * Founding member of the National Academy of Sciences, Ethiopia; since 2010 * Certificate of Recognition from the Government of Ethiopia, 2015


Publications

Since completing his Ph.D. in 1989 Asfaw has been continuing his work in Ethiopia. Specifically, he has worked in the Middle Awash, Chorora and Konso research areas. Below is a sample of publications that focus on his discoveries in this region. * 1994 White, T. D., Suwa, G. and Asfaw, B. ''Australopithecus ramidus'', a new species of early hominid from Aramis, Ethiopia. Nature 371: 306-312. * 1995 White, T.D., Suwa, G. and Asfaw, B. Corrigendum: ''Australopithecus ramidus'', a new species of early hominid from Aramis, Ethiopia. Nature 375:88. * 1997 Suwa, G., Asfaw, B., Beyene, Y., White, T. D., Katoh, S., Nagaoka, S., Nakaya, H.,Uzawa, K., Renne, P., and WoldeGabriel, G. The first skull of ''Australopithecus boisei''. Nature 389:6650:489-492. * 1999 Asfaw, B., White, T. D., Lovejoy, O., Latimer, B., Simpson, S., Suwa, G., ''Australopithecus garhi'': A new species of early hominid from Ethiopia. Science 284:629-635. * 2002 Asfaw, B., Gilbert, W. H., Beyene, Y., Hart, W. K., Renne, P. R., WoldeGabriel, G., Verba, E. S. and White, T. D. Remains of ''Homo erectus'' from Bouri, Middle Awash, Ethiopia. Nature.416: 317-320.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Asfaw, Berhane 1954 births Living people Addis Ababa University alumni Ethiopian paleontologists UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni People from Gondar Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences