The
Middle Awash is an
archaeological site along the
Awash River in
Ethiopia's
Afar Depression. A number of fossils of the earliest
hominins, particularly of the
Australopithecines, as well as some of the oldest known
Olduwan stone
artifacts, have been found at the site—all of late
Miocene, the
Pliocene, and the very early
Pleistocene times, that is, about 5.6 million years ago (mya) to 2.5 mya. It is broadly thought that the divergence of the lines of the earliest
humans (hominins) and of
chimpanzees (
hominids) was completed near the beginning of that time range, or sometime between seven and five mya. However, the larger community of scientists provide several estimates for periods of divergence that imply a greater range for this event,
see CHLCA: human-chimpanzee split.