Overview

We help discover, protect & share fossil evidence that highlights our African birthplace, our shared origins and our place in nature to end discrimination and the destruction of our planet and foster science-based thinking. Dig Deeper www.past.org.za PAST is the largest, independent, African-based not-for-profit working in the origin sciences, supporting education, research and public understanding programming on the prehistoric origins of life and humankind. Since 1994, we’ve used the science of our shared origins to pursue our core mission, which is to benefit humankind’s future. We do this by providing a science-based perspective on two of the greatest challenges facing societies everywhere: discrimination (particularly that based on race) and the rapid, human-induced loss of natural environments and biodiversity. PAST is predicated on the belief that ignoring lessons from the vast 3.8-billion-year period of prehistory, which preceded written history and during which life on Earth originated and diversified, is like a 40-year-old basing a crucial decision on experience gained in the last 30-minutes of their life. The funds we raise support four main areas of activity – research, postgraduate training, youth education and public understanding. PAST-funded research by African-based palaeontologists and archaeologists plays an important role in collectively and conclusively showing that Africa is the birthplace of humankind and in demonstrating the shared origins of all people and all living things. In pursuit of the development of African science, we provide bursaries for origin sciences postgraduate students who are training at African universities. Evidence from these two areas of our work is marshalled for Walking Tall, our acclaimed secondary school education programme, as well as our global public understanding campaign, All from One.