Edge of the World

For one journalist embarking on a seven-year journey to retrace the footsteps of early humans, the biggest obstacles are man-made.

BY PAUL SALOPEK | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013

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Early this year, in the company of camel nomads from Ethiopia's desolate Afar region, I'm planning to walk out of Africa. This dusty jaunt will be the first leg of a seven-year journey -- north into the Levant, east to Asia and Siberia, and down the length of the Americas to Patagonia -- to retrace by foot the first global human diaspora out of our mother continent some 50,000 to 70,000 years ago. It's a long-wave experiment in ambulatory journalism that I'm calling "Out of Eden." Although my ramble will feature few of the hurdles faced by our wandering ancestors -- predators bigger than Volkswagens, for instance, or ice sheets covering Alberta -- it won't lack for obstacles./.../