Ancestor's Trail Hike and Barbeque

If a single human stride (0.75 meters) is equivalent to 60,000 years, then 6.25 centimeters represents the duration of human civilization, which is only 5,000 years old. That means a 12.5-kilometer hike would cover approximately one billion years of evolutionary time, back to the beginning of multi-cellular life on Earth. But who would make such a calculation and why? Kevin Saldanha did. He’s a veterinarian in Ontario, Canada, and the founder of the Ancestor’s Trail Hike in Mississauga, Ontario.

The hike is an opportunity to combine education about the natural world. A pre-set route is mapped against a specific timeline in Earth’s history. During the hike there are stops, called milestones, where hikers learn about different developments in the lifecycles of creatures on the planet. The goal is to go back in time to learn about human ancestors that didn’t look like people but are still part of our biological family.

Join us on Sunday, June 23rd, at 8:00am in Erindale Park in Mississauga for a hike through the last billion years of geological time along the scenic Culham Trail in Mississauga to Pinecliff Dr. Park in Streetsville for a barbeque lunch. If 12.5k is not for you, consider joining us anywhere along the trail at rendezvous times provided at http://www.ancestorstrail.ca/routeoverview.htm The Ancestor's Trail Hike was inspired by a similar event in the UK and the 2004 book on evolution by Richard Dawkins titled "The Ancestor's Tale".
See http://ancestorstrail.ca (http://ancestorstrail.ca/) for more details and download your own passport and poster from the documents section.

Below is an article recently published by the AAAS that outlines the premise for the hike:
http://membercentral.aaas.org/blogs/aaas-serves/hike-back-geological-time