Yonas Beyene

Yonas Beyene Gebremichael earned his Ph.D. from the National Natural History Museum (MNHN), Paris, in 1991 in Quaternary: Geology, Human paleontology and Prehistory, specializing in Prehistory. He is the Director of the Konso Paleoanthropological Research project and project archaeologist for the Middle Awash and Chorora Paleoanthropological projects. He discovered and published the world’s earliest Acheulean technology and its evolution between 1.75 and 0.8 million years before present. He has published extensively.

He was a member of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee, representing Ethiopia. For more than 15 years, he directed the Archaeology & Anthropology, Archaeology & Paleontology, and Conservation sections, consecutively, in the Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage (ARCCH), Ethiopia. He is member of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences, Corresponding Member of the Institut de Paleontologie Humaine, Paris, and recipient of the “Palmes Academiques” from French Ministry of Higher Education and Research. He is affiliated with the French Research Center for Ethiopian Studies (CFEE) and the Association for the Conservation of Culture (ACC), Hawassa.