Oldupai Gorge

Olduvai Gorge in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Northern Tanzania is one of the most famous prehistoric sites in the world and touring it was surely a highlight of our visit to Tanzania.

For the record, the correct name of the site is actually Oldupai not Olduvai, but Olduvai was the first name given to the area by the German scientist Prof. Kattwinkel who was an entomologist studying butterflies in the region in the early 20th century. Prof. Kattwinkel made the first discovery of fossilized bones by chance in 1911 while chasing a butterfly in the Ngorongoro highlands. He asked the local villagers for the name of the area and he misheard and recorded it as Olduvai rather than Oldupai. The correct name of the site originated from the dominant wild sisal plant which grows all over the area. Oldupai means "wild sisal" in the Maasai language.

Prof. Kattwinkel brought the prehistoric bones from Olduvai back to Germany for further investigation and the rest, as they say, is history. The discovery was followed by a series of German scientific expeditions to what was then called "Deutch Ostrafrika" and they continued their exploration and collections until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.



Geographically, Oldupai Gorge is located on the western edge of the eastern branch of the Great East African Rift Valley. In 1928, when Tanganyika was under British colonial rule Dr. Louis Leakey, the son of a British missionary born in Kenya, visited the Berlin Museum and saw the massive fossil collections. Three years later in 1931, he conducted his first expedition from Kenya to Tanganyika to investigate the site where the German scientists collected their fossils.

Our first stop on our visit was the little Oldupai Gorge Site Museum. The history and geology of the area as well as the significant finds and research results are all very well documented and displayed there. (There are plans in the works to expand the museum in the very near future.)

oldupai

Based on fossil evidence unearthed here, it is known that various species of hominid have occupied this area for at least three million years.

The Oldupai Gorge contains an important multi-layered geological stratigraphy which constitutes classical sites in the study of the evolution of Early Man, animals, plants and artifacts. The succession of layers in the Oldupai Gorge were divided by Prof. Hans Reck in 1914 into a basal series of basalt flows and mappable units termed Bed I to V were applied.







The sub-divisions and nomenclature of Reck are still principally in use today with some minor additions and modifications made by the American Prof. Richard Hay in 1976.

During his early tenure at Oldupai, Leakey found ample evidence demonstrating that ancient hominids had occupied the site, but lacking for financial backing, his investigations went slowly and frustratingly refused to yield any truly ancient fossilized hominid remains.

The pay-off came in 1959 when Mary Leakey - Louis's wife and a more than accomplished archaeologist in her own right - discovered a heavy fossilized cranium whose jawbone displayed unambiguous human affinities but was clearly unlike any other fossil documented at the time. Nutcracker Man. It was a critical landmark in the history of paleontology.
Nutcracker Man was later designated as Australopithecus boisei (now usually known as Paranthropus boisei.)









This important breakthrough shot the Leakeys' work to international prominence and with proper funding at their disposal, a series of exciting new discoveries followed. The first fossilized remains of Homo habilis, a direct ancestor of modern man and in 1976, at the nearby site of Laetoli, Mary discovered footprints created more than three million years ago by a party of early hominins that had walked through a bed of freshly deposited volcanic ash - still the most ancient hominin footprints ever found.

There are also plans in the works to build a museum to showcase the Laetoli footprints in situ!

Nutcracker Man

After we made our way through the museum on our own, we hired a local guide to take us down to the actual archaeological site where the discoveries were made.

Vince puts a notch in his pocket knife handle using an ancient stone tool

The place was literally littered with fossilized animal bones,and plants as well as stone tools. We were encouraged to place our findings on the Nutcracker Man marker which has now become a sort of shrine.

Back to our roots!

Oldupai Gorge is still a very active archaeological dig site. Currently, there is an expedition being conducted by American archaeologists from Indiana University, UC Berkeley and my Graduate School alma mater, Rutgers University (MS 1979, MBA 1984)!








 Back at Valley Lodge, my shrine:

bead skull from Maropeng and a sisal basket filled with mementos from Tanzania