Features
The long walk Anna Stadlman invites you to join a learning journey
‘Traveling: it leaves you speechless then turns you into a storyteller.’ The journey, which Salopek calls the ‘Out of Eden Walk’ and describes as ‘a global storytelling project’, began in Ethiopia’s great Rift Valley. Situated beside the field camp of paleoanthropologist Tim White on the Middle Awash River,
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it is considered to be one of the world’s greatest hominid fossil sites. His route follows the archaeological sites where evidence of the first humans has been discovered. He retraces their journey as they moved from Africa eastward across the globe, settling in the Middle East, Europe, Asia and the Americas, until he reaches Tierra del Fuego, his final destination. Writing in National Geographic (2013), Salopek explains that:
Tiny groups of Homo sapiens had been taking similar strolls from this very spot for at least a hundred thousand years. Why? Climate change? Overhunting? Famines? Population pressures? Curiosity? Nobody knows for sure. But for early peoples, this first discovery of the Earth would be a key test of human survival, ingenuity and problem solving. ‘Traveling: it makes you lonely, then gives you a friend; it gives you a home in a thousand strange places.’ As he walks across the world’s remotest places, Salopek meets people. He stops to hear their stories, asking three Spring |
Autumn
This is a story about a man who, one day, pulled on his walking boots, kissed his wife goodbye and set off to walk the world. The journey is expected to take him ten years to complete and to cover 21,000 kilometers. It is a story that will interest teachers and their students across the globe. The man is Paul Salopek, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and National Geographic Fellow. On 10 January 2013 he set off from Herto Bouri, Ethiopia, on a mission to trace the footsteps of our ancestors who left the Rift Valley of Africa 60,000 years ago and headed eastward. On his journey across the planet, he has encountered and will encounter many obstacles created by religious conflicts, wars, and geographical barriers. However, like the archetypal hero on his odyssey, Salopek will also meet characters who help him on his way. He collects their stories and shares them with the world in his dispatches to National Geographic magazine, in videos and in tweets. Through technology, we get a glimpse of people in the world’s distant corners.
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