IN ETHIOPIA’S REMOTE LOWER OMO VALLEY, where our human ancestors first crafted tools, Africa’s most famous Indigenous peoples – the Mursi, Bodi and Hamar among them – practice timeless rituals rooted in land and cattle, lives shaped by the sun, rain, and cosmos. Their world is shaken when Ethiopia’s development revolutionaries spot treasure in waters of the Omo River tumbling from the highlands. The Omo will nourish the greatest agriculture dream in Ethiopia’s history, pushing these ancient cultures to the brink. In the unfolding struggle, the author finds himself as America’s point man, swept into a maelstrom of characters including the wily Ato Molloka, storied anthropologists, fiery activists, embattled conservationists and “human zoo” tourists grasping at the exotic. As tension builds in this most intoxicating of all valleys, does the past have a future?