Lower Valley of the Awash: Visitor and Heritage Guide

A restriction of a different kind

The Lower Valley of the Awash lies in the Afar region, and access is the first thing to settle: foreign nationals are currently unable to travel to airports in Afar regional state because of restrictions imposed by the Ethiopian authorities.

There have also been irregular armed clashes along the main Addis Ababa to Djibouti road, the A1, and attacks on vehicles on that road between Adama and Awash, though these have not targeted international travelers. Check access locally before planning a visit.

What was found here

UNESCO calls the Awash valley one of the most important groupings of paleontological sites on the African continent, with remains the oldest of which date back at least four million years, providing evidence of human evolution that has, in its words, modified our conception of the history of humankind.

Its most spectacular discovery came in 1974, when 52 fragments of a skeleton allowed the reconstruction of the individual known worldwide as Lucy, and in Ethiopia as Dinkinesh. Inscribed in 1980 under criteria two, three and four.

Read this with the Afar guide

This landscape and the people who live in it are covered at length in Afar: Human Origins, Salt and Fire in Ethiopia's Rift, written for this publication by Mahlet Degefaw. That article is the better starting point, and this page is the heritage record that sits beside it.