Tributes to
J. Desmond Clark
1916-2002
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A few days ago we received the sad news from the University of California, Berkeley that Emeritus Professor John Desmond Clark, one of the Honourable President Founders of HOMINID Human Origins Group (Parc CientÌfic de Barcelona, Universitat de Barcelona), and one of the best archaeologists that worked without rest in Africa, Asia, Oceania and Europe, had died. Many of us, can not only speak of him as the scientist that inspired, guided and supported our research and initiatives, but as a deep friend who, throughout his several stays in Barcelona, together with his faithful wife Betty, shared a kindness and gentlemanliness that is sometimes difficult to recognize in the academic world today. We will always remember him like that: as the last knight-errant of Archaeology and Anthropology... with his magnifying glass hanging around his neck ready to observe carefully all that surrounded him, from a lithic tool found for himself in East Africa, to the completion of the text. Even when his sight began to abandon him little by little, he would read something of our papers and coment and criticize sweetly for account that we improve ourselves.

Dear Desmond, thanks for all the moments, from when we were only students and you treated us and listened to us with the same attention that you did when we became Professors, and we finally stepped foot on your dear African continent: the origin of us all.

Jordi Serrallonga, Assitant professor of the University of Barcelona, Director of HOMINID Human Origins Group-Scientific Park of Barcelona (Spain), Victoria Medina, researcher, and all the members of HOMINID Human Origins Group