Porterville College hosts legend in anthropology

Donald Johanson, the paleoanthropologist who discovered the famous Lucy skeleton, came to Porterville College Friday to update an audience — both local and traveled — about some of the latest knowledge about the family tree of human origins.

The knowledge comes from his own discoveries, made in Ethiopia within the past 20 years, he said.

Johanson spoke to a crowd of a few hundred in the college gymnasium about his career’s pinnacle discovery of Lucy, the first known Australopithecus Afarenus, dubbed the common ancestor to humans and other primates.

Since making paleoanthropology’s groundbreaking discovery in 1974, in Hadar, Ethiopia, Johanson’s more recent expeditions have accumulated a wealth of artifacts, and in turn, a greater understanding about the earliest known traces of humanity, dating back to 3.2 million years ago.

That’s the known date attributed to Lucy’s death, according to improved systems of geologic dating not available during the time of her discovery, Johanson said.

After the landmark dig, Johanson’s expeditions in Africa underwent about a decade-long interruption as a havoc-ridden political climate arose in the nation at the time, he said. In 1981, his first book, titled “Lucy,” was published, and in the early 1990s he and his team got the green light to resume digs in Africa. Johanson has since unearthed 380 specimens, he said, of Lucy’s same species, which have afforded the study of human origins a boost of new knowledge.

From “what we known now,” Johanson said, “the [family] tree has many branches.” With as many as 10 new species that lie within the geologic time frame between Lucy’s time and modern time, the tree has become “bushier,” however, he said, her species remains at the starting point.

According to newer discoveries, Lucy was determined to be an adult, a vegetarian and a forest-dwelling creature, he said.

At only three and a half feet tall, Lucy’s skeleton reveals her to be a female, Johanson said. Due to the hundreds of discoveries since Lucy, “we now know something about the range in anatomy and the range in size.” Females tend to be 50 to 60 pounds, much smaller than males, which tend to be around 100 pounds, he said.

Lucy’s wisdom teeth also reveal she was an adult, he said.

What subsequent discoveries to Lucy’s have afforded to the field of paleoanthropology, he said, is a more clear picture of the family tree.

“Living in a world dominated by strife,” one thing to have in mind, he said, is, “we all belong to the same species. We are united by the past.”

In addition, “we are all products of the natural world, which we are taking up, ballooning and destroying,” he said. Being “the pinnacle of the natural world,” he said humans have a responsibility to it, to care for the ecology and to ensure that we treat it with gratitude.

Terryn Griffin, a sophomore at PC, afterward said she heard around campus that the presentation was a must-see, and after attending, wasn’t disappointed.

“It was all interesting,” she said. “I learned a lot.”

Dan Pavlovich, a member of PC’s Anthropology Club, said he, too, learned a lot about the links of other fossils to humans. But most of all, “I like how he brought it all together. He did a good job of making it current.”

Melissa Lopez was part of a group from the Anthropology Club from Cerritos College in Los Angeles, which traveled three and a half hours, the group said, to attend the discussion. Even though Lopez said she was familiar with most of what Johanson was speaking about, as a fan of the subject, the point of coming was to see him talk in person.

“It was good,” she said. “It was worth coming.”

Another in Lopez‘s group, Edward Mejia, referred to Johanson as the “rock star of anthropology.” He and the club members were camping out for the night near Lake Success in order to attend the event, he said.

PC’s student body president, Jesse Trujlo, echoed Mejia’s enthusiasm.

“This is the biggest speaker we’ve had all year, so I wasn’t going to miss it,” he said, “and I learned about this guy in anthropology, so it’s like going to a concert.”

That excitement was the goal of Richard Osborne, PC’s anthropology professor who booked Johanson last November, he said.

“[Johanson] is the man. This is a really big deal,” Osborne said. “He’s got a busy schedule, so we’re very lucky.”

Exposing the students at the college — and the public — to a live speech from a high-caliber professional, he said, was the idea from the outset.

“I realize that a lot of our students are kind of isolated in Porterville, so I just think that it’s important to expose them to things that, maybe, they wouldn’t get a chance to see,” Osborne said.

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