How long, oh lord?

I don't know about you, but my blood began to boil as soon as I read the following report in the British daily, The Guardian, on 7 February: "Scientists from France, Britain and Kenya who

found what is believed to be the oldest fossilised remains of a hominid, an ancestor of modern man, north of Nairobi last year, unveiled their discovery IN PARIS yesterday [my capitals].

"They proclaimed their discovery of the 6 million-year-old 'Millennium Ancestor' the greatest anthropological scoop of modern times. It could provide a new insight into our prehuman ancestry, they said at the College de France.

"The creature [christened] Millennium Ancestor lived near a lake in dense woodland in the Baringo region of Kenya, about 150 miles from [Nairobi...

"Perhaps be was a young male, or maybe female, " said the British geologist, Dr Martin Pickford, who works at the College de France, and is co-leader of the Kenya Palaeontology Expedition with Dr Brigitte Senut.

"... We can say he was quite young when he died, " Dr Pickford, whose team presented 13 fossilised remains, established the fossil age by studying the lava surrounding his body.

`Millennium Ancestor is 3 million years older than Lucy, whose remains, found in Ethiopia in 1974, were previously thought to be the oldest discovered homonid ancestor..."

So why was I angered by this report? I was livid because the announcement of the find should have been made in Kenya! There is a UNESCO Convention on this sort of thing, for crying out loud. Millennium Ancestor belongs to Kenya and in Kenya his remains should be.

Of course, they will tell us that the fossils were flown to Europe because it would be "easier" to carry out tests on it there than in Kenya. Balderdash!

Palaeontologists don't get excited about fossil finds and cart them off to laboratories in Europe, unless they are at least 90% sure of what they have found. They only use facilities in Europe to confirm what they already know.

In any case, when the deadly Ebola disease broke out in Uganda recently, were the patients sent to Europe for treatment? You bet not. All the complex equipment and drugs needed to treat the disease somehow found its way to Uganda.

To the naive, this may sound like making a mountain out of a molehill. They found 6 million-year-old fossils in Kenya and took them to Europe, so what? Well, I am afraid it is not quite as simple as that. What is at stake here is credit; credit for the find; credit for the finders; and credit for those who confirmed the dating. And the College de France, having financed the research, wants all the credit. When Millennium Ancestor is mentioned, it is on the College de France that the spotlight of fame must shine. Not Kenya. Not Africa.

Does it matter? Yes it does. Credit does seem to matter a great deal - not least to European and American scholars. You pinch a sentence from them without attribution and you will see. Therefore, their palaeontologists must come to Africa to study our fossils, so that they can give credit to where they got their information.

As it is now, everything is the other way round. African students obtain half their knowledge in Africa, and then have to go to Europe and America to conclude their studies, often relying on materials taken to Europe and America from Africa in the first place. Isn't that ridiculous?

I do not know whether the Kenya authorities have in fact agreed that Millennium Man should be kept in Europe, but if they have, then they have made a great mistake. I believe that some of the Kenyans are aware of the importance of keeping the fossils there, but the Kenya authorities appear divided on the issue.

At any rate, I say kudos to whoever it was in Kenya who put the British leader of the find, Pickering, in jail for a short while, when he tried to send the stuff to Europe.

Pickering got off because apparently he had been granted a permit. Well, whoever granted that permit must be called to account. For unless he got a water-tight agreement from the team--justiceable internationally - to bring the fossils back to Kenya after the announcement of the find in Paris, I am sure Kenya has seen the last of them.

Africans have been too naive about such things for far too long. Let an African millionaire try and export some valued treasure - say art works by Toulouse Lautrec, for argument's sake - from France and see what happens. Yet the Louvre is chock-full of the most amazing collections of African art.

And so appreciative are these thieves of these invaluable expressions of the African spirit - works which helped "great" European artists such as Picasso to climb to the top of the genius tree - that they do not scruple to label them, quite pejoratively as "Primitive Art".

Despite the hypocrisy evident in their being greedy for our artifacts (which their labelling would make one think they despise, anyhow), our officials and ministers are always being "nice" to them when they want to lay hands on more of our treasures.