Archaeology
Ol Ari Nyiro is situated along the eastern Kenyan edge of the Great Rift Valley across the Tugen Hills, where Orrorin Tugenensis- Millennium man- was found in 2000. Signs of early settlements, tools, burial grounds and standing monolith stones have been discovered here. Mesolithic – in addition to Paleolithic and Neolithic – sites recently found witness a continuous early man presence from the Early Stone Age through the Middle Stone Age to the New Stone Age and the most recent Nilotic pastoralists settlements.
Observed for the first time by Dr. Richard Leakey in the early ’80s, and subsequently visited several times by his mother Mary, and explored by the National Museums of Kenya archaeologists, The University of Pennsylvania, Spanish Archaeologist Ana Pinto (Research Fellow at the Spanish Research High Council CSIC), and recently-2014- by the Cambridge University team of Professor Robert Fowley and Dr. Marta Verizon Lahr, Ol Ari Nyiro Archaeological sites hold much promise for future excavations.