The Awash val­ley con­tains one of the most impor­tant group­ings of palaeon­to­log­i­cal sites on the African con­ti­nent. The remains found at the site, the old­est of which date back at least 4 mil­lion years, pro­vide evi­dence of human evo­lu­tion which has mod­i­fied our con­cep­tion of the his­to­ry of humankind. The most spec­tac­u­lar dis­cov­ery came in 1974, when 52 frag­ments of a skele­ton enabled the famous Lucy to be recon­struct­ed.