Lucy’s Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia

	Letter from Museum President Joel A. Bartsch
	Watch Lucy's Legacy TV Spot
	About the Exhibit

Ethiopia's rich cultural heritage, is one of the best-kept secrets in the world. “Lucy’s Legacy” introduces you to the incredible five million-year history of this fascinating country, known as the Cradle of Mankind.

More than 100 artifacts in the exhibit illuminate this rich heritage, including fossils, historical manuscripts, paintings, coins, musical instruments, implements of daily use, religious artifacts and more.

A Land of Kings

This exciting exhibit consists of two segments. Part one begins with the story of ancient Ethiopia and the Kingdom of Aksum. According to tradition, the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, King Menelik became the founder of the Solomonic dynasty. The story starts with the kingdom of Aksum in the northern highlands of the country. During a period of roughly seven centuries, a succession of kings ruled a territory that covered large portions of present-day Ethiopia as well as neighboring Eritrea and portions of Yemen. This section follows the country’s rise in religious, economic and cultural power through the centuries, and ends with modern Ethiopia and the end of the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie I.

A Country of Discoveries

The second part of the exhibit examines the many species of early hominid that called Ethiopia home, culminating with the display of the world’s most famous fossil, Lucy. Even the Ethiopian public has seen Lucy only twice. The Lucy exhibition at the Ethiopian Natural History Museum in the capital, Addis Ababa, is a replica, the real remains are usually locked in a vault. Emphasis on geographic and chronological context will set the stage to tell the story of our ancestors. A wide variety of multi-media presentations and text panels will also elaborate on what anthropologists do, and how we get from finding a fossil to telling a story such as the one we will present in this exhibit.

Visitors will not only have the opportunity to come face-to-face with Lucy, but also meet with the earliest known members of our own species, Homo sapiens, who lived almost 200,000 years ago in what is now Ethiopia. Other important paleoanthropological discoveries will also be represented to complete the current account of human evolution as known to scientists today.

In addition to the other fascinating fossils and stunning artifacts in the exhibition, newly famed fossil Ida (Plate B) will join Lucy on display as part of Lucy's Legacy in New York. Officially called Darwinius masillae, this 47 million-year-old fossil is almost-unbelievably well-preserved, providing a window into our primate past - when the key adaptations of opposable thumb and big toe had just evolved. Explore the Ida fossil with Dr. Robert Bakker, HMNS visiting curator of paleontology, in this video.

Visitors to Lucy's Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia in Times Square will also have the opportunity to view information about the research recently completed on the Lucy fossil in UT's High-Resolution X-ray Computed Tomography Facility, one of the world's premier labs for this work, as well as meet and interact with Viktor Deak, one of the world’s leading paleo-artists. Deak created the stunning 10-foot-tall, 78-foot long mural that illustrates 6 million years of evolutionary history in Ethiopia that visitors can see in the Lucy gallery, as well as many of the other evocative reconstructions of early human ancestors

Visitors to the exhibition can observe Deak at work, ask him questions and learn first-hand how he has merged his passions of science and art to communicate an understanding of our prehistoric past and see how he utilizes modern technology to re-create a vision of our beginnings more vivid than ever before.

Deak will be available in the exhibition most days; a general schedule of his appearances will be available here soon.