Next week I am hosting the 3rd annual workshop of the Chew Bahir Drilling Project with 35 participants from the Ethiopia, Germany, United Kingdom and United States of America. The project, as part of the international Hominin Sites and Paleolaces Drilling Projects (HSPDP), tries to fill gaps in the environmental history of East Africa, the habitat of early human ancestry. Within the framework of the project, two ~280 m long cores were collected in the Chew Bahir Basin in Southern Ethiopia including the last ~550,000 year history of environmental change in the southern Ethiopian rift were some of the oldest fossils of our own species were discovered. The first results from analyzing these cores will be discussed during the workshop. See press release of the workshop here.