Published Work
Science for Africa Foundation
This photo and a number of others adorn the walls at their headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya
National Geographic
This Kenyan paleoanthropologist is digging deep to find our ancestors
One excavation at a time, Isaiah Nengo is building a fossil record of Africa’s early inhabitants—and sharing expertise with its present ones.
January 12, 2022
The death of anthropologist Isaiah Nengo was announced in a tweet from the Turkana Basin Institute, where he was associate director. This profile of Nengo, a National Geographic Explorer, appears in the February issue of National Geographic.
Looking for fossils, Isaiah Nengo (at left) sifts dirt with Faith Wambua of the National Museums of Kenya. When Nengo was in high school, a lecture at the museums by paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey sparked his interest. Today some of his finds are housed there.
Photograph by David Gottlieb
Looking for fossils, Isaiah Nengo (at left) sifts dirt with Faith Wambua of the National Museums of Kenya. When Nengo was in high school, a lecture at the museums by paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey sparked his interest. Today some of his finds are housed there.
Photograph by David Gottlieb
Nengo teaches at New York’s Stony Brook University and Kenya’s Turkana University College. He also runs a master’s program in human evolutionary biology that was launched at Turkana University in 2017. Aiming to build local expertise and research capacity, the program has admitted eight students so far, all Kenyans, six of them women. Nengo would like to add students from neighboring countries in future years. “Training Africans from East Africa is not charity,” he says. “It’s actually essential to the science.”
The National Geographic Society has funded the work of paleoanthropologist Isaiah Nengo since 2018. Learn more about its support of Explorers researching history and culture at natgeo.com/impact.
This story appears in the February 2022 issue of National Geographic magazine.
Kenya Wildlife Service
Turkana Basin Institute
Some of the Photoraphic Work I have Produced for Turkana Basin Institute
