Lance Richardson finds the Africa of imagination on the shores of Lake Turkana

There is a room in the Nairobi National Museum that resembles a vault designed to showcase jewels, tucked behind bulletproof glass. In a sense that's exactly what it is. Although the room contains little more than bones, these fragments are just as precious as diamonds and even more rare.

For example, there is a skull of Homo habilis ("handy man"), found in 1973 by the research team of Richard Leakey, a skull of Homo erectus ("upright man"), and also Nariokotome boy, the most complete early human skeleton ever discovered. These bones are divergent lines of evolution - or the remains of our ancient ancestors. Almost all were found at Lake Turkana, Kenya.
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