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1. The "Dikika baby girl" is also called "Lucy's baby", "Little Lucy", and "DIK-1-1". What is her name in the Ethiopian (Amharic) language?
"Selam", which means peace.
2. What does Australopithecus afarensis mean: "Australian ape found forensically"; "southern man from a far land"; "southern ape from Afar"; or "fair-skinned monkey man"?
Australopithecus afarensis means "southern ape from Afar" (the Afar depression, part of Africa's Great Rift Valley, is a region rich in hominin finds).
3. Name the Ethiopian paleoanthropologist who discovered the Dikika baby?
Zeresenay Alemseged.
4. The legendary first emperor of Ethiopia, Menelik I, was believed to be the son of which two famous historical figures?
King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
5. The region of Ethiopia has had many names. Which one of the following has not been used to describe it: Abyssinia; Punt; Atlantis; Cush; or Yam?
Atlantis.
6. "Lucy", the famous fossil skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis, was discovered by a team led by the noted anthropologist Donald Johanson in 1974, in an area not far from where the Dikika baby was found. Who was "Lucy" named after?
Lucy" is named after the female character in the Beatles' song,"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". As Dr. Johanson describes: "All we could talk about was the discovery of this specimen. And we were listening to Beatles tapes. … One of the songs that was playing was 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.' And we thought that instead of calling her, 'the partial Australopithecus skeleton from locality 288', that she needed some name; something that would be easier to refer to her. I jokingly said, 'Why don't we call her Lucy?' And little did I know that would catch on."
7. What does "Dikika" mean in the local Afar language?
"Dikika" is the name given to a distinctly shaped hill in the region that means nipple, which is quite appropriate for the "Dikika baby", who was still of nursing age.
8. The slogan of the Ethiopian Tourism Commission is "Thirteen Months of Sunshine". Where does this 13th month come from?
Based on the Coptic calendar, the Ethiopian calendar consists of twelve months of thirty days each and a bonus thirteenth month of five or six days. The calendar is also about eight years behind the Western (Gregorian) calendar.
9. What is the most important cereal crop in Ethiopia?
Teff is the primary cereal crop in Ethiopia, where it is ground into flour, fermented for a few days, and made into injera, a sourdough-type flat bread.
10. Name the most famous hoax in the history of anthropology.
The Piltdown man hoax was the most successful fraud in the history of anthropology. Although the exact identity of the perpetrator of this hoax is disputed, all of the supposed fossil evidence (fragments of a skull and mandible) was fabricated and had been planted at Piltdown in Sussex, southern England, as part of a carefully orchestrated and deliberate hoax. Although "discovered" in the early 1900s, the hoax lasted into the 1950s.
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