Into the Inferno Page #5

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the top...

of the left orbit.

So to sort of place it in Clive's head...

- Whereabouts?

- Other side. There you go.

Okay.

I'm looking into the eye

of a Paleolithic hominid that lived here.

So, it's a three-dimensional

jigsaw puzzle.

Yeah, no one's gonna argue

that those two pieces fit back together.

That's a nice fit.

In evolutionary terms,

here in the Middle Awash,

we have six million years' worth

of rocks.

The ones on the bottom

have small-brained early bipeds.

These are close to the top

of the succession.

These are much more like you and I.

They have chins, vertical foreheads.

We still have a lot to learn about them,

but the importance for humanity

is that this is the right time,

100,000 years ago,

and the right place, Africa,

according to the archeology

and the genetic evidence...

to know the people who were the ones

who expanded from Africa to Asia,

to Europe, and then beyond.

While these people were living here

in tropical Africa,

dining on hippos,

Europe was locked under ice.

Let's go get more pieces.

Are we ready to rock 'n' roll?

Let's get brushes.

We've taken all of

the surface-exposed bone off the surface.

We suspect there's going to be

sub-surface bone in here.

We've maximized where we think it is,

and now it's a matter

of going to the casino

and rolling the dice

and hoping we're gonna get

some nice human anatomy,

fossilized for 100,000 years,

right out of this unit.

We're just gonna brush and find bone.

Whoa! There's a piece of bone

right there.

That one's not identifiable,

but it might join other ones

and become identifiable.

So, that's a keeper.

Every single piece of bone

is a keeper.

See the piece?

So, that's a limb bone shaft.

I can't tell which limb bone.

It's one of three.

It's tibia, humerus or femur.

Here we go.

That's a nice shaft piece.

Again, it's tibia...

It's one of the major long bones.

It's this one, this one or that one.

You can see these things are...

they're completely turned to stone.

They're completely fossilized,

so they're brittle.

And when erosion comes

and exposes them,

they just shatter.

And so, we have to be careful

to get all of the shattered pieces.

My skeleton has 206 bones.

Same with this person.

They're human.

But now we're looking for literally

probably 4,000 pieces

because all of those bones

each shattered.

I can already see something

that discriminates you and I,

which is, we've been here

the same amount of time.

You've pulled out half a dozen

of these bone fragments.

I haven't found anything.

There's clearly an expertise

that goes with this business.

But the greatest thing about the game

is the combination of the expertise

and the luck.

Like Las Vegas.

Viva Las Vegas!

Courtesy of Bizayu.

Bizayu! Got a limb bone shaft.

Thank you.

What's wrong over there, Clive?

- Ohh!

- Ohh!

Whoo!

Check it out!

Clive.

Where does it fit in?

Check it out. This is a distal humerus.

Definitely hominid.

It is right down at the end

of your upper arm bone.

So, if we were to place this

in our anatomy,

we'd set it up something like that.

I figured out, Tim,

I'm holding the brush wrong.

There's got to be something wrong

with my technique.

Come on, Clive,

move over into the hot place there.

I'm moving K.K. out.

This is your chance.

- You don't think it's too hot for me?

- This is your chance.

You got to get in here, man.

This guy's finding everything.

I was right there.

He planted it.

It's just to make me look bad, isn't it?

- I'll stick to volcanology.

- Brush, man, brush!

He's going to lose this race.

Piece after piece

after piece after piece.

Maybe we'll get it all

back together again.

If we're lucky.

If Clive would just find something!

- I'm not gonna give up.

- Come on, Clive.

Huh? Look at...

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Whoa! Bingo!

- Is it a human?

- Yeah.

All right! He's got it.

Clive scores!

It's such a relief.

Just out of the dirt,

where it's been 100,000 years, maybe.

A little piece of my direct ancestor,

perhaps.

It's quite heavy. It's, uh, fossilized.

One skeleton from Kenya.

One skeleton from two meters up,

500 meters away,

in the Middle Awash.

And this one.

That's how rare...

even partial skeletons of human

ancestors are in that time interval.

Just the first surface sweep,

we've probably got another 30 pieces

of this individual,

and all of this came out

in about 30 minutes

of simply sweeping.

As these piles that we've swept up

go through the sieve,

we're gonna have

a bunch of other pieces of bone

that escaped the brushing

but won't escape our sieve.

Hopefully,

we'll see a cranium take shape,

and we'll come to know

the anatomy of this person.

I just...

What a phenomenal cornucopia

for half an hour's work

with a dustpan and brush.

It's just... just sensational.

One of three in Africa

ever recovered.

Your timing was very good.

What? Wait a minute.

There's a Konso dance going on here

in the background.

- It's gonna be good.

- This is gonna be good.

- Moya!

- Moya means, in Afarinia, "head. "

Got the moya.

Whoo!

We got a moya!

The extraction begins.

This fragment

is of particular importance,

as it is part of the cranium.

Time for a Shakespearean moment, perhaps,

to soliloquize on...

my deep ancestry.

I can see the curvature.

It's the biggest piece we have so far.

As dusk came,

we made our way to the volcano.

Looking into the magma at night,

the interior of our planet

reveals its strange beauty.

Compared to Ethiopia,

Iceland's history

is a mere blip in time.

Less than 1,200 years ago,

it was settled by Norsemen.

All of Iceland is volcanic,

including the Westman Islands

to the south.

Out of nowhere,

in the early morning hours

of January 23, 1973,

a trench of fire opened

right at the edge

of the town of Heimaey.

The eruption occurred

without any previous warning signs.

As bad as it looks,

no one lost their lives here.

The fishing fleet

had just returned to harbor

and rescued many of the inhabitants.

Forty years after the event,

Clive Oppenheimer brought us here.

Grass has grown again,

and there are still curtains

in the windows.

But Heimaey was hardly

an isolated event.

Not a season goes by in Iceland

without an eruption.

This event happened in 2010

and is remembered as the ash cloud

that paralyzed air traffic for weeks.

Very quickly, the heat from the eruption

melted the thick ice covering

on top of the mountain,

creating enormous floods.

But an event of this magnitude

is nothing

compared to earlier eruptions

in Iceland.

This area is the site

of the so-called Laki eruption.

Beginning on June 8, 1783,

this entire landscape

exploded into flames

as far as the eye could see,

from horizon to horizon.

The molten rock

came up to the surface

and rent open

a 27-kilometer-long fissure

that stretches in this direction

for something like half of that distance.

Overall, about 140 vents were active,

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