For fossils to thrive, certain favorable circumstances are required. First of all, of course, remnants of life have to be there. These then need to be washed over with water as soon as possible, so that the bones are covered with a layer of sediment.

It is virtually impossible to control Northern Kenya, which is populated chiefly by migrant nomads.

Climate change: We have never faced a more critical time on our planet

My father used to say that, through culture, humans effectively domesticated themselves.

For three million years we were hunter-gatherers, and it was through the evolutionary pressures of that way of life that a brain so adaptable and so creative eventually emerged. Today we stand with the brains of hunter-gatherers in our heads, looking out on a modern world made comfortable for some by the fruits of human inventiveness, and made miserable for others by the scandal of deprivation in the midst of plenty.

Along the borders to Ethiopia and Somalia, anarchy reigns, the police and military have retreated quite some distance.

The problem of the apes is not a shortage of money, it is a shortage of strategy. Let us devote our minds... the one thing we have more of than other apes... and let's secure their future.