¶ … junior high school level easy understand reviewing journal article "East Africa's Man has continually wondered about his original development -- how continents were formed and how humanity evolved. Studying a system of rifts that occurred in Africa can possibly give insight into this process. This theme is discussed in Wood and Guth's article, "East Africa's great rift valley: a complex rift system." The authors explain a number of different things about rifting such as what it is and how it occurs, and then relate it to the development of mankind and the formation of continents which are currently on or beneath the surface of the planet.

BRIEF OVERVIEW AND MAIN POINTS

This article is structured fairly well, although it is not necessarily structured logically. Still, there are several headings that one can simply glance at to get an overview of the main points of the article. The article begins with an introduction about the East African Rift System, which is a unique series of rifts that are visible (and still taking place) in the eastern part of Africa. Rifts are defined in the article as geologic movements in which the plates of the earth are moving apart from one another to create new plates in the process (Wood and Guth, no date). The authors go into a fair amount of detail about the nature of this particular rifting system, which includes descriptions of various rifts that are found in this area. Additionally,...

They explain this from a geologic perspective with a number of terms that those not familiar with this jargon will probably not understand. The authors then provide insight into one of the rifts in this system, the East African Rifts, before ending the article with implications that rifting has for anthropology and the history of the world in general.
ARTICLE STRENGTHS

The strongpoint of this article is certainly in its presentation. The clear headers are able to help the reader navigate through this article and to see how the various points relate to one another. Additionally, there is a good amount of pictures that help to accompany the article. These pictures are critical because the vast majority of the article is about a subject and places with which people in the United States are not extremely familiar. Although the concepts discussed in the article are not intensely academic, they are specific to a narrow area of interest. Thus, the fact that the writers decided to include illustrations of rifts and the various parts of Africa that they article details is a very useful thing. It helps readers to visualize unfamiliar concepts of rifts and plates, as well as provides good mapping information about the part of the world in which these events are regularly seen.

Another strength of the article is the fact that the authors are able…