Kenya Overview

Kenya lies across the equator in east-central Africa, on the coast of the Indian Ocean.

The Laikipia Plateau of Kenya, East Africa, was home to some of our earliest ancestors. Overlooking the Great Rift Valley, often referred to as the “cradle of mankind,” it has evidence of hominid occupation from the Early Stone Age to the present. The focus of the present study is on the period of transition from Later Stone Age to the Pastoral Neolithic, approximately 4000 years ago when the first groups of cattle-herding peoples entered the area.

Read more about the Origins of Pastoralism in East Africa.

Kenya’s Laikipia Plateau has archaeological remains from the Early Stone Age (ca. 2.5 million–200,000 years ago), the Middle Stone Age (200,000–50,000 BP), the Later Stone Age (50,000 BP–2500 BCE), the Pastoral Neolithic (2500–500 BCE), and the Iron Age (500 BCE to the present).