I’m not terribly articulate at what I think of carbon dating and the age of things like Lucy found in archeological digs. But oddly enough I was reading a book on the trip that used an example of someone presenting an ancient sculpture to a museum for sale. Every curator that saw it knew in an instant that it wasn’t right. But 14 months of testing proved it to be the correct age of such sculptures. It had a patina on it that could only come with the aging of thousands of years, or so they thought.
It turned out that all the curators gut reactions were right. And some kind of potato mold could create the same patina in a relatively short time. I don’t understand the science. But it makes me confident that what other expert tests are sure of, could be very wrong.
On the shuttle to the Lalibela Airport I was seated next to a young business man from Iran. He was in a chatty mood and so I let him lead a conversation. He asked if I believed in evolution. I gave a minimal opinion which only fueled his about how the youth of his country are starting to side in favor of evolution and science which in turn in causing quite a stir in the religious circles there.
I tried my level best to help him see that even scientists can be wrong, and even they need ‘faith’ to close the gaps in their work. But he was sticking to his beliefs in the area of evolution.
Lucy is a little creepy, and so were some of her friends in the basement of the National Museum.
Jane, my traveling companion and long-time friend quickly observed the constant stream of tourists, thus Western income contrasted with the very poor lifestyles of those who live in the village. It would appear that all this influx of money has not filtered down to affect the standard of living.
This is a town steeped in history and lore. The churches are stunningly incredible. It’s hard to imagine carving down over 55 feet into solid rock to make a building. Let alone doing it by hand. These churches are about 900 years old. There are all kinds of caves and tunnels, deep foot paths and strange stone cut pools.
After a while you realize that even though the churches are very much in use and ceremonies happen often, there isn’t real life in this religion. And perhaps that is the reason for the extraordinary poverty in a village with such a large foreign capital income.
Jane Kilonzo went with me. Jane is Kenyan, Kamba to be exact. And Jane has a bit of an unusually light complexion for a Kenyan. Back in the 90’s when Jane and I would go to aerobics class together we had a friend who was Indian descent. We compared their skin tones finding them essentially the same. 
