Obama meets Lucy, an ancient ancestor, in Ethiopia

U.S. President Barack Obama who is currently on his two-country visit to Africa has met a famous ancient skeleton during his Ethiopia visit on Sunday. He touched the fossilized vertebra nicknamed Lucy, part of several hundred pieces of bone representing a female Australopithecus afarensis, who was estimated to have lived 3.2 million years ago in Ethiopia.

Lucy, female and slightly less than 4 feet tall, was found in the northern Ethiopian area of the Afar Triangle in 1974, and represents the most complete skeleton of an early human ancestor ever discovered.

President Obama had a chance to experience the fossil ahead of dinner at a national palace in Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. The fossil, normally housed in Ethiopia’s national museum, was brought to the national palace on Monday for Obama’s visit. The U.S. president touched Lucy after being encouraged by Zeresenay Alemseged, senior curator of anthropology at the California Academy of Sciences. The extraordinary access, unthinkable for almost anyone else, shows how the Ethiopian government welcomed the U.S. president.

Later, Obama told guests at a state dinner that Lucy is a reminder that the world’s people are part of the same human family. “We are reminded that Ethiopians, Americans, all the people of the world are part of the same human family, the same chain,” he said. “So much of the hardship and conflict and sadness and violence that occurs around the world is because we forget that fact.”