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Tanzanian Time Travel with Dr. Janet Monge
When most people think about tracing their ancestry, the time frame generally includes only the last few generations. In anthropology, human ancestry extends back tens of thousand generations linking us all back to the African continent, and to east Africa specifically, to the origin of our lineage. The great link of all humans is to our African roots. Tanzania lies at the heart of this diverse tree of human life on this planet. This African country holds the key not only to the origin of our linage but also to the diversity of the human experience in the world today. This Museum tour is organized around this joint human experience with visits to places where these ancestors first lived their lives hunting the game of great Serengeti, to the development of the great Swahili culture, to the colonial experience of Dar es Salaam. We start at the end …. And begin by flying into Dar es Salaam. 1. Dar es Salaam – the mixing pot of African, Indian, German and Arab influences. At the same time, it serves as a bustling city of many diverse African populations juxtaposed against architecture and art melding all of these cultures. It is a true global representation of humans. 2. Swahili Culture – one of the great indigenous sub-Saharan African cultures. After the exploration of Dar, we will immerse ourselves into the rich cultural context of the great Swahili coastal peoples. Travels will include excursions along the northern coast of Tanzania; Bagamoyo, the town known for its origins as an Indian Ocean slave trade community; and finally onto exotic Zanzibar – one of the many Indian Ocean gems in the crown of Swahili culture. 3. The East African Rift Valley – the cradle of humankind. The final part of the trip highlights places representing the deepest history of East Africa and human occupation: The great African Rift Valley. Here we explore not only the rich environments of east Africa, including the Ngorongoro crater and the Serengeti plains, but also visit the famous Louis and Mary Leaky site of the first excavations of members of the human lineage at Olduvai Gorge. Please join me. I hope to add in positive ways to your understanding of all of these peoples and places with lively discussions and hopefully debates that surround any deep exploration of African culture, history and prehistory.
Dr. Janet Monge A letter from Rosa Meyers of the Women's Committee... Dear Penn Museum Traveler, Meet your tour leader: Dr. Janet Monge - a physical anthropologist. Evolution is in her bones. Therefore she will help all of us who are lucky enough to accompany her to East Africa to better understand our own human adaptation and survival. She is the Acting Curator of Physical Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. She is also the keeper of Physical Anthropology at the Museum and Associate Director of the Casting Program. Dr. Monge is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, and she teaches at Princeton University. Janet has done extensive field work in Europe, Australia and Africa. Her primary research interest is in human evolution. In addition, she is dedicated to the preservation of museum collections and has developed methodologies to preserve and broadcast datasets to the physical anthropology community as well as to distribute the highest quality castings of human fossils to universities and museums all over the world. It is her plan to develop a virtual museum of skeletal collections so that researchers all around the world can use CT scans of the Penn Museum collection as part of their own research. In addition to all of this, Dr. Monge is the co-curator of the very recently opened and highly acclaimed Penn Museum exhibit Surviving: The Body of Evidence. Janet Monge is an outstanding teacher. And she will make this trip an unforgettable experience. Rosa Meyers,
Women’s Committee Tours |
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Tanzanian Time Travel – 2 million years of human history. Back to the homeland of humans.