When humans want to look into the past, they often dig into the ground. Under the soil, archeologists can find all kinds of things that help us learn about life long ago.
That’s what I found out from my friend Rachel Horowitz, an archaeologist at Washington State University who is very curious about the lives of our human ancestors.
Let’s say a human ancestor passed away and was buried at the edge of a lake. Layer after layer, the soil, pebbles, sand and other earth materials start piling up on top of the burial site.
Some of the fossils that have taught us about the past were bones belonging to a human ancestor that archeologists named Ardipithecus ramidu. Or Ardi, for short