Addis Ababa University (AAU) is a national university located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It is the oldest university in Ethiopia. AAU has thirteen campuses. Twelve of these are situated in Addis Ababa, and one is located in Bishoftu, about 45 kilometres (28 mi) away. AAU has several associated research institutions including the Institute of Ethiopian Studies. The Ministry of Education admits qualified students to AAU based on their score on the Ethiopian University Entrance Examination (EUEE).
Herto Man refers to the 154,000 - 160,000-year-old human remains discovered in 1997 from the Upper Herto member of the Bouri Formation in the Afar Triangle, Ethiopia. The discovery of Herto Man was especially significant at the time, as it fell within a long gap in the fossil record between 300 and 100 thousand years ago, and at its description in 2003, it represented the oldest dated H. sapiens remains. In the original description paper, these 12 individuals were described as falling just outside the umbrella of "anatomically modern human". Thus, Herto Man was classified into a new subspecies as "H. s. idaltu". It supposedly represented a transitional morph between the more archaic "H. (s.?) rhodesiensis and H. s. sapiens. Subsequent researchers have rejected this classification. The validity of such subspecies is difficult to justify because of the vague definitions of "species" and "subspecies", especially when discussing a chronospecies, as the exact end-morphology and start-morphology of the ancestor and descendant species are inherently unresolvable.
RasMakonnen Wolde Mikael Wolde Melekot, or simply Ras Makonnen, also known as Abba Qagnew, was a Shewan royal from Menz, a military leader, the governor of Harar province in the Ethiopian Empire, and the father of Tafari Makonnen. His father was Dejazmach Wolde Mikael Wolde Melekot of Shewa. Makonnen was a grandson of Negus Sahle Selassie of Shewa through his mother, Woizero Tenagnework Sahle Selassie. As such, he was a first cousin of the Ethiopian Emperor, Menelik II.
Abune Paulos was an Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church Patriarch from 1992 to his death in 2012. His full title was "His Holiness Abuna Paulos, Fifth Patriarch of the Orthodox Tewahido Church of Ethiopia, Ichege of the see of Saint Tekle Haymanot, Archbishop of Axum and one of the seven serving Presidents of the World Council of Churches."
Tim D. White is an American paleoanthropologist and Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is best known for leading the team which discovered Ardi, the type specimen of Ardipithecus ramidus, a 4.4 million-year-old likely human ancestor. Prior to that discovery, his early career was notable for his work on Lucy as Australopithecus afarensis with discoverer Donald Johanson.
Haramaya University (HU) is a public research university in Haramaya, Oromia Region, Ethiopia. It is approximately 510 kilometres (320 mi) east of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The Ministry of Science and Higher Education admits qualified students to Haramaya University based on their score on the Ethiopian Higher Education Entrance Examination (EHEEE).
The Middle Awash is a paleoanthropological research area in the Afar Region along the Awash River in Ethiopia's Afar Depression. It is a unique natural laboratory for the study of human origins and evolution and a number of fossils of the earliest hominins, particularly of the Australopithecines, as well as some of the oldest known Olduwan stone artifacts, have been found at the site—all of late Miocene, the Pliocene, and the very early Pleistocene times, that is, about 5.6 million years ago (mya) to 2.5 mya. It is broadly thought that the divergence of the lines of the earliest humans (hominins) and of chimpanzees (hominids) was completed near the beginning of that time range, or sometime between seven and five mya. However, the larger community of scientists provide several estimates for periods of divergence that imply a greater range for this event, see CHLCA: human-chimpanzee split.
Yohannes Haile-SelassieAmbaye is an Ethiopian paleoanthropologist. An authority on pre-Homo sapiens hominids, he particularly focuses his attention on the East African Rift and Middle Awash valleys. He was curator of Physical Anthropology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History from 2002 until 2021, and now is serving as the director of the Arizona State University Institute of Human Origins. Since founding the institute in 1981, he has been the third director after Donald Johanson and William Kimbel.
Ardipithecus kadabba is the scientific classification given to fossil remains "known only from teeth and bits and pieces of skeletal bones", originally estimated to be 5.8 to 5.2 million years old, and later revised to 5.77 to 5.54 million years old. According to the first description, these fossils are close to the common ancestor of chimps and humans. Their development lines are estimated to have parted 6.5–5.5 million years ago. It has been described as a "probable chronospecies" of A. ramidus. Although originally considered a subspecies of A. ramidus, in 2004 anthropologists Yohannes Haile-Selassie, Gen Suwa, and Tim D. White published an article elevating A. kadabba to species level on the basis of newly discovered teeth from Ethiopia. These teeth show "primitive morphology and wear pattern" which demonstrate that A. kadabba is a distinct species from A. ramidus.
Seyoum Mengesha KBE was an army commander and a member of the royal family of the Ethiopian Empire.
The Bouri Formation is a sequence of sedimentary deposits that is the source of australopithecine and Homo fossils, artifacts, and bones of large mammals with cut marks from butchery with tools by early hominins. It is located in the Middle Awash Valley, in Ethiopia, East Africa, and is a part of the Afar Depression that has provided rich human fossil sites such as Gona and Hadar.
Berhane Asfaw is an Ethiopian paleontologist of Rift Valley Research Service, who co-discovered human skeletal remains at Herto Bouri, Ethiopia later classified as Homo sapiens idaltu, proposed as an early subspecies of anatomically modern humans.
Giday WoldeGabriel is an Ethiopian geologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who co-discovered human skeletal remains at Herto Bouri, Ethiopia, now classified as Homo sapiens idaltu.
Aklilu Lemma was an Ethiopian pathobiologist. In 1989, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award "for discovering and campaigning relentlessly for an affordable preventative against bilharzia."
Mulugeta Bekele is an Ethiopian scientist and academic. He is an associate Professor of Physics at Addis Ababa University (AAU), Ethiopia. He completed his PhD in Physics at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India in 1997. He has been awarded the Andrei Sakharov Prize by the American Physical Society (APS) "For tireless efforts in defense of human rights and freedom of expression and education anywhere in the world, and for inspiring students, colleagues and others to do the same." He is the president of Ethiopian Physical Society since October 1998 and an Associate Member of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy since May 1999.
The Massacre of the Sixty, or Black Saturday, was an execution that took place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia commissioned by the Derg government against 60 imprisoned former government officials at Kerchele Prison on the morning of 23 November 1974. The prison was commonly called Alem Bekagn – "I've had enough of this world".
The Middle Awash Project is an international research expedition conducted in the Afar region of Ethiopia with the goal of determining the origins of humanity. The project has the approval of the Ethiopian Culture Ministry and a strong commitment to developing Ethiopian archaeology, paleontology and geology research infrastructure. This project has discovered over 260 fossil specimens and over 17,000 vertebrate fossil specimens to date ranging from 200,000 to 6,000,000 years in age. Researchers have discovered the remains of four hominin species, the earliest subspecies of homo sapiens as well as stone tools. All specimens are permanently held at the National Museum of Ethiopia, where the project’s laboratory work is conducted year round.
Haile Selassie was the emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974.