GEA Organizes Entertainment, Comedy Shows at Jeddah Season

One of the events at the Jeddah Season festival. (SPA)
One of the events at the Jeddah Season festival. (SPA)
TT

GEA Organizes Entertainment, Comedy Shows at Jeddah Season

One of the events at the Jeddah Season festival. (SPA)
One of the events at the Jeddah Season festival. (SPA)

The General Entertainment Authority (GEA) is organizing several theatrical performances and comedy shows as part of its participation in the Jeddah Season, reported the Saudi Press Agency Monday.

The comedy events will kick off in Obhur with the "Three Days on the Coast" play, starring Egyptian comedian Mohammed Henedi, from June 26 to 29, while "It's All Wrong", a play starring Egyptian comedian Ashraf Abdel Baqi, will be held from July 10 to 13.

The comedy activities will continue from June 10 to July 18 at Al-Shallal Theme Park with the Saudi Comedy Club touring through an Artology exhibition featuring a group of local, Arab and international comedians. They will present a range of performances, including a stand-up challenge, the "Saudi Cinderella" show, international stand-up comedy shows and comedy musicals.

Comedians Talal Al Sheiki, Mohammed Sultan, Abdulrahman Al Somali and Abdulkhaleq bin Rafea are set to feature at the events.

Comedy lovers will also be delighted by the show organized by XJed at the Jeddah Waterfront and presented by the Laugh Factory, the number 1 comedy club in the United States, from June 23 to July 18.

Through these events, GEA underlines its constant efforts to provide an exceptional experience for visitors of the Jeddah Season and to bolster Saudi Arabia’s standing in the entertainment sector.



Muddy Footprints Suggest 2 Species of Early Humans Were Neighbors in Kenya 1.5 Million Years Ago

An aerial view shows a research team standing alongside the fossil footprint trackway at the excavation site on the eastern side of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya in 2022. AP
An aerial view shows a research team standing alongside the fossil footprint trackway at the excavation site on the eastern side of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya in 2022. AP
TT

Muddy Footprints Suggest 2 Species of Early Humans Were Neighbors in Kenya 1.5 Million Years Ago

An aerial view shows a research team standing alongside the fossil footprint trackway at the excavation site on the eastern side of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya in 2022. AP
An aerial view shows a research team standing alongside the fossil footprint trackway at the excavation site on the eastern side of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya in 2022. AP

Muddy footprints left on a Kenyan lakeside suggest two of our early human ancestors were nearby neighbors some 1.5 million years ago.
The footprints were left in the mud by two different species “within a matter of hours, or at most days,” said paleontologist Louise Leakey, co-author of the research published Thursday in the journal Science.
Scientists previously knew from fossil remains that these two extinct branches of the human evolutionary tree – called Homo erectus and Paranthropus boisei – lived about the same time in the Turkana Basin.
But dating fossils is not exact. “It’s plus or minus a few thousand years,” said paleontologist William Harcourt-Smith of Lehman College and the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who was not involved in the study.
Yet with fossil footprints, “there’s an actual moment in time preserved,” he said. “It’s an amazing discovery.”
The tracks of fossil footprints were uncovered in 2021 in what is today Koobi Fora, Kenya, said Leaky, who is based at New York's Stony Brook University.
Whether the two individuals passed by the eastern side of Lake Turkana at the same time – or a day or two apart – they likely knew of each other’s existence, said study co-author Kevin Hatala, a paleoanthropologist at Chatham University in Pittsburgh.
“They probably saw each other, probably knew each other was there and probably influenced each other in some way,” The Associated Press quoted him as saying.
Scientists were able to distinguish between the two species because of the shape of the footprints, which holds clues to the anatomy of the foot and how it’s being used.
H. erectus appeared to be walking similar to how modern humans walk – striking the ground heel first, then rolling weight over the ball of the foot and toes and pushing off again.
The other species, which was also walking upright, was moving “in a different way from anything else we’ve seen before, anywhere else,” said co-author Erin Marie Williams-Hatala, a human evolutionary anatomist at Chatham.
Among other details, the footprints suggest more mobility in their big toe, compared to H. erectus or modern humans, said Hatala.
Our common primate ancestors probably had hands and feet adapted for grasping branches, but over time the feet of human ancestors evolved to enable walking upright, researchers say.
The new study adds to a growing body of research that implies this transformation to bipedalism – walking on two feet — didn’t happen at a single moment, in a single way.
Rather, there may have been a variety of ways that early humans learned to walk, run, stumble and slide on prehistoric muddy slopes.
“It turns out, there are different gait mechanics – different ways of being bipedal,” said Harcourt-Smith.