Northwestern Kenya, Lake Turkana, one and one half million years ago.
Eternity offers different paths. Long before the scientific age, nature found one. The time came to make one human eternal.
Five members of a Homo erectus clan ran across the plains, carrying a zebra’s haunch. They were aiming for the bushes, but they still had a long way to go. The heavy prize slowed down the stronger male, and, even worst, the younger hunter was falling behind. The hideous whooping of the chasing hyenas was closing in. They would have to fight. The leader ordered a stop and turned to face their enemy—just in time.
The fateful hunt had started one day before, thirty kilometers to the northwest, at the grassy ridges that dominated the lower savannah all the way to the jade-colored lake in the east—the clan’s home range. The hunters had gathered by a trickle of crystal-clear water near their encampment of half a dozen animal-skin dwellings.
The elderly member of the clan had covered his thigh with a piece of leather, selected a pebble from the ground, and started pounding the fringes of the finest tool in his inventory, a shiny-black, tear-shaped obsidian hand axe. He had resharpened the entire perimeter of the worn axe with small angled blows, checking the edges with his fingertips until satisfied. Then he had handed the stone to the leader, who had been watching him the whole time.
The leader placed the black tool on a leather rag, together with other hand axes made from basalt, and wrapped them in a makeshift bag. He stood up and moved toward the other hunters, who were squatting under the shade of a big oval stone. Four males were chewing on tamarinds for breakfast. The stronger male had emptied his bowels and was still foraging through the tamarind leftovers scattered on the ground for a fruit. A ten-year-old boy, almost as big as the other males, was waiting to the side. He was the fifth hunter.
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