Paul Salopek: Retracing humanity's ancient migration, on foot

Pulitzer Prize-winner and National Geographic Fellow Paul Salopek is retracing our ancestors’ ancient migration on foot out of Africa and across the globe. His 24,000-mile, multiyear odyssey began in Ethiopia — our evolutionary “Eden ”— in January 2013 and will end at the tip of South America. 

Supported by the National Geographic Society and the Knight Foundation, Paul is engaging with the major stories of our time, from climate change and technological innovation to mass migration and cultural survival. 

Each chapter of his journey reveals the texture of the lives of the people he encounters — nomads, villagers, traders, farmers, and fishermen who seldom make the news. 

Salopek is currently in the fifth chapter of his journey, traversing an emerging center of global power and navigating a maze of waterways across fertile South Asia.

When this journey ends, he will have pieced together a global mosaic of stories, faces, sounds, and sights — an unparalleled archive of our shared humanity at the start of a new millennium.

You can follow his journey on Instagram >>