The search for a Kenyan Stonehenge

Cradle of Mankind

00:00 05:27

Aidan Hartley has narrated this article for you to listen to.

Paleoanthropologists tried to kill me a few days ago. Luckily I was saved by Max Mutkin, a young Londoner who had come along with me to track down a Neolithic monument in Kenya’s searing-hot northern deserts. Our guide was B—, a local man I’d been assured ‘knows everything there is to know’. We were aiming for the shores of Lake Turkana, known as the Jade Sea, and in that vicinity I’d heard there was a site where people had erected a little Stonehenge 5,000 years ago. En route Max regaled me with stories of what it was like to be at university during Covid, and life ahead in his barrister’s pupillage. After driving through remote wastes, we came to the foot of a red mountain, got out of the veh