OUT OF EDEN WALK
Chapter Highlights
Back to top
Featured Story
Hiking the Glenn Highway through Alaska. Published in Asphalt Pilgrims.
Paul Salopek
Hiking the Glenn Highway through Alaska. Published in Asphalt Pilgrims.
Paul Salopek
The Out of Eden Walk is a storytelling journey that uses the deep past as a mirror to reflect on humanity’s collective future as we stride together into a challenging new century. This 42,000-kilometer walking odyssey follows the first human dispersal out of Africa during the Stone Age. It uses “slow journalism” to explore human conditions at boot level, across borders and cultures, and makes connections between ordinary peoples’ lives and the global headlines of our day.
National Geographic Explorer and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Paul Salopek is walking across four continents, retracing the groundbreaking trails blazed by humans who first migrated out of Africa some 60,000 to 120,000 years ago and eventually reached South America. This continuous, multiyear 42,000-kilometer trek began in Ethiopia — our evolutionary "Eden" — in January 2013, and will end in Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America, a region that helped shape Charles Darwin’s ideas on evolutionary theory.
Supported by the National Geographic Society, Salopek and a growing community of walking partners from many different nations and backgrounds are examining the major stories of our time, from climate change and technological innovation to mass migration and shifting cultural identity. More than half a million words of online dispatches, along with thousands of videos, photos and audio recordings accumulated so far, reveal the interconnected joys and struggles of the people encountered — nomads, students, villagers, scientists, urbanites, artists, farmers, and more — whose extraordinary life stories seldom make the news. Once the journey ends, the Out of Eden Walk project will have built an unparalleled narrative of our shared humanity at the start of a new millennium.
National Geographic Explorer and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Paul Salopek is walking across four continents, retracing the groundbreaking trails blazed by humans who first migrated out of Africa some 60,000 to 120,000 years ago and eventually reached South America. This continuous, multiyear 42,000-kilometer trek began in Ethiopia — our evolutionary "Eden" — in January 2013, and will end in Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America, a region that helped shape Charles Darwin’s ideas on evolutionary theory.
Supported by the National Geographic Society, Salopek and a growing community of walking partners from many different nations and backgrounds are examining the major stories of our time, from climate change and technological innovation to mass migration and shifting cultural identity. More than half a million words of online dispatches, along with thousands of videos, photos and audio recordings accumulated so far, reveal the interconnected joys and struggles of the people encountered — nomads, students, villagers, scientists, urbanites, artists, farmers, and more — whose extraordinary life stories seldom make the news. Once the journey ends, the Out of Eden Walk project will have built an unparalleled narrative of our shared humanity at the start of a new millennium.
Two weeks into the Out of Eden Walk, Paul Salopek and local guides traverse the Afar region of northeastern Ethiopia.
John Stanmeyer
The journey begins in Ethiopia at one of the world’s oldest human fossil sites, Herto Bouri, and unspools across the scalding Afar Triangle, in the Rift Valley. Along this pathway our restless forebears ventured forth toward the Gulf of Aden, where they first stepped out of the mother continent to explore the wider world. As Salopek bears witness, this ancient pathway remains a conduit of opportunity—and sometimes fatal tragedy—for migrants seeking a better life today.
Walking is falling forward. Each step we take is an arrested plunge, a collapse averted, a disaster braked. In this way, to walk becomes an act of faith.
Support Out of Eden Walk
You can help Paul create a chronicle of human life on Earth and ensure that everyone’s story is told. Support the Out of Eden Walk and the pursuit of “slow journalism” with your gift today.
Donate
The National Geographic Society is a global nonprofit that uses the power of science, exploration, education, and storytelling to illuminate and protect the wonder of our world.
The Out of Eden Walk is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization managing Paul Salopek's 38,000-kilometer (24,000-mile), globe-spanning foot journey with the core mission to connect the diverse partners involved in the project and promote cross-cultural understanding through the power of slow journalism.
Credits
Site Editor: Oliver Payne | Cartographer: Brian Jacobs