In 1984, on the western shores of Lake Turkana, a team led by Richard Leakey made the most complete early human skeleton ever found. They called him Turkana Boy. He was about eight years old when he died. He lived 1.5 million years ago. He was Homo erectus, and he stood upright, looked almost modern from the neck down, and would have been taller than many humans today. Staring at his bones, scientists realised that the journey from ape to human happened faster than anyone thought. And it happened here, in what would one day be called Kenya.