Tracing Humanity Back to Eden
Sixty thousand years ago, modern humans emerged from Kenya's Turkana Basin in search of food. Over thousands of years, they made their way through the Middle East, across Asia, up over the Bering Strait and into the Americas, and down to the tip of what is now Chile, in Patagonia.
Now, long after humans divided up the land and settled down, traveler and reporter Paul Salopek is stepping back in time on an ancient quest. His goal: to retrace every step of human migration. Salopek grew up in a Mexican village, made a living as a fisherman, headed up The Chicago Tribune's Africa bureau, and embedded in war-torn countries like Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan. He's bringing this experience to bear in a quest that's measured both in footsteps and by years. He's here to talk about his new project, Out of Eden.
Paul Salopek, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a longtime foreign correspondent for The Chicago Tribune. Starting in late 2012, Paul Salopek will begin a multi-year walking trip to trace the migratory patterns of modern humans, from Africa all the way down to South America.