This post was originally published on November 15, 2019 on a previous version of ChipWalter.com.

In February of 2013 I departed on assignment for National Geographic Magazine for South Africa. On the same trip I later visited London and Oxford. I was gone for three weeks and visited locations from Table Mountain in Cape Town to some of the most ancient human settlements yet discovered. After camping near African caves, I walked the storied streets of London and the halls of the great British Museum of Natural History then headed for interviews to Oxford University.

Later that year I also visited caves in Germany, France and Spain where some of the oldest paintings, sculpture and musical instruments have been found, all for the same assignment.

At the time I remember writing: “Stay tuned into September (2013) to see what I’ve come across, or what comes across me.”

You can read the Dispatches from this lucky series of trips. I will forever be grateful to National Geographic for giving me this assignment.

Dispatch # 1 begins here on my way to the tip of Africa, through Amsterdam.