30 million footsteps
Perhaps 60,000 years ago, the ancestors of modern humans began a slow migration out of Africa, researchers say. Over the generations, they wandered and multiplied, moving into Europe, Asia, and the Americas. About 12,000 years ago, they reached the tip of South America. During that long journey, they became the humans of today. Next month, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and National Geographic Fellow Paul Salopek will take the first of 30 million footsteps in a planned 22,000-mile trip to follow the path of that first massive human migration. In a project incubated at Harvard earlier this year, when he was the inaugural visiting Nieman Fellow, Salopek plans to spend seven years walking from the Great Rift Valley in Ethiopia into the Middle East, across Asia, and eventually from Alaska to Patagonia. Salopek will report on what he sees, hears, and feels in what he calls “slow journalism.” “It’s going to press the boundaries...