There’s a particular gallery within the Herbal Historical past Museum Abu Dhabi the place guests decelerate, decrease their voices and continuously fall silent. In entrance of them, in moderation lit and disarmingly small, lies the skeleton of Lucy, the three.2 million-year-old hominin.
In all probability greater than every other historical relative, Lucy has challenged us to assume deeply about what it manner to be human.
Her historical bones had been came upon by way of a world workforce led by way of American paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson in Ethiopia’s Afar area in 1974. This remarkably entire specimen of Australopithecus afarensis reworked our working out of the human evolution tale.
The skeleton’s discovery got here a couple of weeks after the workforce were energised when Ato Alemayehu Asfaw, an Ethiopian palaeoanthropologist and a member of the workforce who later turned into the Director of the Nationwide Museum of Ethiopia, discovered a jawbone from the similar species.
Lucy’s skeleton supplied transparent proof that strolling upright preceded the growth of the human mind, reshaping medical narratives that had endured for many years.
Named for the western global after the Beatles track Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, the Ethiopian participants of the workforce referred to as her Dinknesh (“You are marvellous” in Amharic). She has served as an envoy for Ethiopian cultural and herbal heritage ever since. However whilst she turned into some of the celebrated fossils on the earth, only a few other folks had in fact observed her.
Ethiopian government attempted to switch that during 2007, operating with American establishments to take Lucy to the United States. Alternatively, a marketing campaign by way of scientists who voiced fear concerning the protection of the specimen put a damper at the willingness of main museums to place her on show. Lucy gave the impression at 4 venues ahead of returning to Ethiopia in 2013.
Nearly twenty years later, Lucy has travelled in a foreign country once more – this time to the Herbal Historical past Museum Abu Dhabi, of which certainly one of us (Peter Kjærgaard) is director. Her talk over with comes at a time when now not simply the generation of transportation has modified, however the narrative surrounding the entire box of paleoanthropology.
Finding Lucy: an interview with American paleoanthropologist Donald Johansson (2023). Video: Herbal Historical past Museum of Denmark.
A closely-guarded secret
Lucy’s newest adventure outdoor her Ethiopian house was once a closely-guarded secret. Within the months main as much as the Herbal Historical past Museum Abu Dhabi’s opening in November 2025, an overly small team labored in the back of the scenes at the logistics and protection of transporting her, in addition to the sophisticated environmental stipulations of the exhibit that will be her new house.
A small workforce travelled to Addis Ababa to paintings heavily with Ethiopian colleagues together with experts from the Ethiopian Heritage Authority and Nationwide Museum of Ethiopia. Each and every step required care, accept as true with and precision.
Each and every unmarried bone was once meticulously packed and safe in particular commute circumstances with in my opinion designed hollow space mounts. Not anything was once left to likelihood. Not anything may pass fallacious.
Lucy arrived safely in Abu Dhabi only some days ahead of the hole of the museum. Nonetheless a secret, she was once saved safely whilst the ultimate situation assessments and ultimate paintings at the gallery was once accomplished.
Sahleselassie Melaku, the Nationwide Museum of Ethiopia’s head of palaeoanthropology, putting in Lucy’s skeleton in Abu Dhabi.
Marc McAlester/NHM Abu Dhabi, Writer supplied (no reuse)
Lucy’s curator on the Nationwide Museum of Ethiopia, Sahleselasie Melaku, in moderation positioned the delicate bones within the show case. It felt like the remainder of us held our breath for all of the time as we watched the items progressively remodeling into the enduring define of Lucy.
In the end, she was once there in entrance folks. Ethiopia’s choice to proportion her was once an impressive strategy to have fun the hole of a brand new museum in a area the place such establishments have traditionally been uncommon.
We’ve watched guests come upon Lucy now not as an summary medical object, however as a person. The impact has been putting. Other people linger. They replicate. Many are visibly moved and reasonably continuously stunned by way of the realisation that this isn’t a reproduction, however the true fossil – a being who lived and moved round our global thousands and thousands of years in the past.
Collaboration now not colonialism
Lucy’s adventure from Ethiopia to Abu Dhabi displays a broader shift in how wisdom, heritage and authority are shared.
For far of recent historical past, discoveries from Africa had been accrued, studied, interpreted and displayed a ways from their puts of beginning. Now, that type is converting. An increasing number of, African international locations are announcing management over their cultural and medical heritage, figuring out now not handiest how it’s preserved, however how it’s interpreted, shared and proven.
Lucy’s presence in Abu Dhabi embodies this modification. She has now not been got rid of from her context; she has been shared thru collaboration. She stays Ethiopian, and her adventure is outlined by way of a robust partnership – a type which we are hoping will construct accept as true with, make stronger establishments in each the UAE and Ethiopia, and open new pathways for shared analysis and schooling.
When the Herbal Historical past Museum opened in London in 1881, it was once observed as a quintessential image of Victorian ambition, medical interest and commercial energy. Similarly, the development of a Herbal Historical past Museum in Abu Dhabi within the twenty first century is an emblem of nationhood, world identification and medical ambition.
The museum was once designed from scratch to have interaction a contemporary target audience in recent ideas equivalent to biodiversity, conservation and human affects. It opened at a time of world popularity of the wish to decolonise many western museums, and incorporated a unprecedented number of Overdue Miocene fossils (7-8 million years previous) from the UAE, which were returned from their longtime resting position within the London museum.
We imagine the way forward for science relies now not handiest on discovery however cooperation – at the skill to bridge areas, views and histories. Lucy helps to do this.
When she returns to Addis Ababa in July 2026, she is going to elevate along with her the imprint of this alternate. What stays in Abu Dhabi can be greater than the reminiscence of a outstanding exhibition. It’ll be a suite of relationships between establishments, between international locations, and between other folks and their shared previous.
