Category: Africa

BREAKING BARRIERS: THE FIRST FEMALE FIELD GEOLOGIST IN TANZANIA

BREAKING BARRIERS: THE FIRST FEMALE FIELD GEOLOGIST IN TANZANIA

(Featured image by Eleanora Robbins.)

Tanzania’s Chief Geologist, Alec McKinley, regarded me skeptically from behind his large wooden desk. “You’ll niver go into the field,” he announced in his Scots brogue. 

It was 1964 and I, a Peace Corps volunteer (and newly minted geologist c/o Ohio State University) had just arrived in Dodoma, the headquarters of the Geological Survey of Tanzania (GST), to learn my duties.  I had expected them to include fieldwork, so, naturally, I was disappointed. Just like every other geologist on Earth, I looked forward to working in the field. But I was a woman, and in those days female geologists everywhere faced uphill battles for acceptance. 

Office of the Geological Survey of Tanzania (or Tanganyika as it was in 1964) in Dodoma. 

Photo: Eleanora Robbins

Instead, I was given the task of assessing data in notebooks, obtained from Williamson’s Diamond Mines, containing spectrographic trace chemical data. And when I say notebooks, I mean piles of them, containing data from 60% of the country. Williamson’s Diamond Mines had removed all the gold and silver analyses but left the data on the other 15 chemical elements. 

Norrie, GST Director, John Pallister and Chief Geologist, Alec McKinley. 1964. 

Photo: Eleanora Robbins 

In 1961, Tanzania had too few educated people to man top-level government positions. Therefore, many British colonial personnel stayed on until Tanzanian’s could be trained to take their places.

But fate later smiled on me. Alec McKinley took home leave. Officials posted to the far reaches of the British Empire typically did this once every several years but then did not resume their duties for up to a year. Therefore, Alec would be gone for some time. Fortunately for me, his replacement, Gerald Carter, had a different approach. For one thing, he wanted to “ground truth” the sites reported in the notebooks. Secondly, as the proud and often harried parent of two daughters, he was fully aware of the inherent capabilities of females. He was, in other words, a breath of fresh air. “I’m sending you into the field,” he announced. Thus was my place sealed forever as the first female field geologist with GST.

Gerald Carter
Photo: Eleanora Robbins. 1965

He did put one restriction on me—I had to stay in someone’s house.  To determine where this would be, I prepared a new map.  On it I plotted the locations of my anomalies (ground-truthing sites), Peace Corps volunteers, schools, and missions. One anomaly was not too far from where another member of my Peace Corps group, a nurse, Diane Schultz, was posted in Kondoa, central Tanzania. I wrote to her, and she replied, “Come.”  Therefore, my field crew and I stayed at her place. They camped out in her yard. It was a win-win situation for everyone, too, as Diane and I discovered the first morning when we peaked out the window and saw prostitutes / girlfriends leaving the camp. Camp in a city? Enjoy city life!

Dodoma, near the center of Tanzania. Kondoa is 95 miles north, on the road to Arusha.Map by Shakki. GNU Free Documentation license 1.2.

Norrie with her field crew. Dodoma, Tanzania.

Photo: Eleanora Robbins

My crew and I spent three weeks working out of Kondoa, prospecting for mineral deposits by taking stream sediment samples from dry stream beds (it was the dry season). Going to a previously sampled area, we walked up the principal stream until we reached the mouth of a tributary, then walked a short distance up that to take a sample. Samples were analyzed in the lab using a spectrograph.  And that was it: field work that was simple, straight forward, and routine. Nevertheless, we had to keep alert. I discovered this on my very first day in the field, when, somehow, we walked right into a herd of elephants and had to crawl away on hands and knees through sparse grass to escape.  On the second field trip, a charging rhino caught us off guard and I was saved from being gored and trampled when one of my crew yanked me up a steep stream bank just before the heavy beast (they can weigh over a ton), trotted by, huffing like a steam engine.

Sampling sediments in a dry stream bed in Central Tanzania. (If spectrographic analysis in the lab found significant amounts of an important mineral in the sample, prospecting would continue up the tributary to locate its source.)

Photo: Eleanora Robbins

            However, the encounter that’s most seared into my memory happened when, walking upstream in a wide, dry riverbed, we suddenly disturbed two cape buffaloes resting in the deep shade of an overhanging tree. One of them charged. Pandemonium ensued, with everyone but me rushing for the nearest tree and climbing as high as they could. “Panda mti!” my crew screamed at me, “Climb a tree!”  Unfortunately, I couldn’t. Having had polio as a child, my stomach muscles aren’t strong enough.  So, here I was, the only person still on the ground, the sole focus of a rapidly approaching beast with wicked-looking horns. What to do? Whatever adrenaline says! Remembering a knoll about a quarter mile back, I ran for it. 

Cape buffaloes: Even lions are wary.

Photo: David Bygott

            This put my field crew in an existential bind. As I learned later, they had been told their main job was to bring me back alive; samples were secondary. So, they climbed out of the trees. I have no idea what happened behind me. I know we had two big rifles but heard no shots. I know the men put themselves in danger for me. I ran in circles around the knoll trying to escape that buffalo before someone somehow diverted it, causing both animals to run away. 

            I sat down and started to cry. My field tracker, Issa Laibu, caught up to me and asked, “U mzima? (“Are you alive?”). I said, “Ndiyo” (“Yes”). “Kwahiyo kwanini unelia, mama?” Issa asked, “So why are you crying?”. I couldn’t think of a reason, so I stopped, got up and we went back to work. Of course, we were skittish for the rest of the day. 

            After all the samples were taken in the field, I spent the rest of my time at Dodoma, plotting more data onto maps (analyses were done by others). And I admit, it was fun being young and female, surrounded mostly by single men. Social life in Dodoma was good, plenty of parties given by my European and Asian colleagues, an ever-changing stream of visiting Peace Corps volunteers, trips to Arusha for milkshakes, and travel to Dar es Salaam to swim in the ocean.  

Norrie and her assistant, Tony Petro, plotting data from the notebooks onto maps.

Photo: Eleanora Robbins

I also met Mary Cibaya, the health care worker at the GST there in Dodoma. She first sought me out to teach her English, then later invited me to visit her and the children of her Wagogo village outside Dodoma. (The Wagogo tribe occupies a large area around Dodoma in central Tanzania.)  About once a week over the next two years, I strapped my guitar over my shoulder, jumped on my blue Peace Corps bike and pedaled out of town to her village. 

            It was fun! The village children taught me Tanzanian songs, bits and pieces of which I still remember.  In fact, even now, many years later, I still sometimes find myself crooning “Malaika, na kupenda maliaka–Angel, I love you, angel,” a love song that was popular at the time, or “Baba na mama . . . Sita rudi—Father and mother . . . They won’t return,” a beautiful melody about remembering dead parents. In return, I taught them American folk songs, just as I did at birthday parties for my European and Asian colleagues’ kids.  Soon all the kids in the village and Dodoma were singing American songs like Kumbaya, only with different accents: The African children singing Kum “ba” ya, (in Swahilli, the accent is on the middle syllable), and the other kids singing Kumba “ya.”

Wagogo children

Photo: Eleanora Robbins

Mary became my best friend in Tanzania. She taught me the first lesson I needed when working with kids—that mothers and grandmothers will do their best to attract anyone who will give their children a leg up in this world. Mary had six at the time but eventually nine over the years. She always told me, “Norrie, I’m going to send my children to you one day.”  I was to learn that she meant it. 

Norrie and Mary Cibaya 

Photo: Eleanora Robbins

            Almost 30 years later, in 1996, my husband, Brian, and I welcomed Mary’s 26-year-old son, Isaac, at Dulles Airport near Washington DC where we lived. After a few months with us, he moved to the Los Angeles area where there is a large Tanzanian community. We kept in touch. Isaac subsequently became a building contractor. He also married and, together with his wife, produced two bright children, a daughter who is presently interested in black holes, and a son in videography. 

            Then, 27 years after coming to the USA, Isaac asked me, now a widow living in San Diego, California, to formally adopt him. “My mother, Mary, always told us, her children, that we had two mothers—her in Tanzania and you in America,” he explained.  I was intrigued. Having given Mary the money to build the house in which she raised Isaac and his siblings and having kept up with her and them over the years, I already regarded them as “family.” Also, Brian and I had never had children. Therefore, by adopting Isaac I would automatically gain some. On March 17, 2023, we legally became mother and son. 

            Gaining a ready-made family was a decided benefit of my working in Tanzania.  I also benefitted in that my Peace Corps experience there gave me non-competitive eligibility for a 34-year-long government career with the U.S. Geological Survey. And an interesting career it was, too, especially in that, focused as it was on rocks and minerals of the world, it allowed contacts made so many years ago to become lifelong friendships which, thanks to the internet, are still intact.

No complaints!

This post is adapted from Warner, D. (Editor). 2024. We Came, We Saw, We Changed: Creating a Peace Corps Legacy in Tanzania 1964-1966. Library of Congress Control Number 2024907333 (with additional input from Eleanora Robbins).

RANGELANDS OF CENTRAL SOMALIA

RANGELANDS OF CENTRAL SOMALIA

REPORTS BY RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND RESEARCH, LONDON.

This announces the availability of free downloads for the first set of hard-to-obtain reports on the rangelands of Central Somalia. https://storiesofeastafrica.com/reports-on-the-rangelands-of-central-somalia/

This post includes surveys and maps carried out in 1979 by Resource Management and Research (RMR), London. Reports by other agencies will follow in future posts.

VOLUNTEERING IN TANZANIA: LESSONS FROM THE KILOMBERO SETTLEMENT SCHEME

VOLUNTEERING IN TANZANIA: LESSONS FROM THE KILOMBERO SETTLEMENT SCHEME

(Featured image by Paul Bolstad.)

Editor’s note: Many of this website’s posts derive from my time as a volunteer in Tanzania in the mid 1960’s.  However, I’m also interested in the experiences of other volunteers who devoted a few years of their lives in assisting communities and non-government and government agencies in East Africa. This post, by Paul Bolstad, is the second in this line. If you have a volunteer story you would like to have published please let me know at d_herlocker@icloud.com.

By Paul Bolstad, U.S. Peace Corps volunteer.

PROLOGUE

It was late afternoon and the Kilombero Settlement Scheme’s small, corrugated metal office building was hot and stuffy. Wiping sweat from my brow, I returned to trying to make sense of a farmer member’s accounts as recorded by the scheme’s clerical staff: Smudged pages, indecipherable scribbles, misplaced decimal points, numbers in the tens when all logic said they should be in the 100’s, columns that didn’t add up. . . Yuck!  

“Hodi?” Can I come in?  Our mechanic stood in the open doorway brandishing a greasy truck (lorry) part.  “Imekwisha!” he announced. It is finished! He glumly added that: (a) the vehicle it came from couldn’t run without it, and (b) he had no replacement parts. Oof! Bad news: The scheme’s trucks had to be kept running to haul our farmers’ sugar cane to the processing factory. I knew exactly what Mr. Temu, the manager, was going to say: “Paul, please take the bus to Dar es Salaam tomorrow to get more vehicle parts.” 

And I didn’t want to because it would delay sorting out the farmers’ accounts so they could be paid for cane they had produced last year, something the previous manager had failed to do. But the trucks had to be kept running, so . . . 

Mechanic: How can I work without spare parts?
Paul Bolstad

Just then another familiar face appeared, an older man with wispy beard and Muslim skull cap (kofia).  Mr. Temu and I knew him as a loquacious troublemaker and probable cause of the removal of the scheme’s previous manager. He wanted to see Mr. Temu about a “problem.”  Uh oh!

This was more bad news: I could see this request leading to a baraza or meeting, with Mr. Temu and I spending an entire morning or afternoon listening to farmers’ complaints about problems we already knew about and were trying to fix. It would keep us in touch with our farmers but otherwise solve nothing. For my part, I would worry the whole time about unfinished accounts and the need to keep our trucks / lorries running. 

Dar es Salaam was beginning to look more inviting. 

I was part of a group of 13 Peace Corps volunteers assigned to the Rural Settlement Division in Tanzania’s Ministry of Lands and Settlement. Our charge was to help, in any way we could, in the management of resettlement schemes. The latter were assisting people to a better life by giving them an opportunity to produce cash crops alongside their normal food crops. This involved clearing land with heavy equipment, surveying plots, and supplying seeds, fertilizers, tools, and on-site agricultural advice. Schemes marketed the crops at negotiated prices and, after deducting the costs of inputs they had supplied, paid each farmer based on the amount he/she had contributed. 

KILOMBERO SETTLEMENT SCHEME

The Kilombero Settlement Scheme, based at Sonjo 35 miles north of Ifakara, supported 250 families living in three villages. Settler members came from all over the country. The settlement scheme provided sugar cane to the privately owned Kilombero Sugar Company, which had extensive plantations of sugar cane at the base of the Udzungwa Mountains 17 miles away.  Smaller sugar cane “out-growers” augmented the company’s cane production. At 1,000 acres, the Kilombero Settlement Scheme was the largest “out-grower.” 

Location of the Kilombero Settlement Scheme. 
Map data@2014 Afrigis(Pty) Ltd, Google 

Sugar cane growing on the settlement scheme.

Paul Bolstad

Planting sections of sugar cane, which will take root and grow up to 15 ft (4.5 m) high and 2 inches (5 cm) thick .

Paul Bolstad

I arrived in Oct. 1966, half-way through the harvesting season, to find the settlement scheme roiled by farmers so unhappy that they had forced the removal of the previous manager. They were especially angry about frequent breakdowns of settlement scheme vehicles which threatened the scheme’s ability to deliver its quota of cane to the sugar factory. Many had waited for over a year to harvest their cane and be paid. 

Farmers discussing a problem

Paul Bolstad

However, there was a wider problem in that the farmers simply didn’t trust the government civil servants running the settlement scheme. They especially disliked the Tanzanian clerical staff, or “karanis,” who acted superior, treating the farmers with little respect.  The farmers also felt the karanis were trying to trick them out of their fair shares in the proceeds.  The leaders in fomenting and channeling this mistrust and anger were settlers from the coastal areas, the “Waswahili,” whose language, Kiswahili, was widely used throughout East Africa as a trade language.  Not known for their commitment to hard physical labor, they were, on the other hand, accomplished attenders of meetings and discussions, and in sending delegations to headquarters bearing complaints and demands. 

(For more about Swahili culture see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swahili_culture.)

Settlement scheme farmers meeting to discuss problems. Note the predominance of Muslim Waswahili as indicated by their distinctive kofias or caps.
Paul Bolstad.

THE NEWCOMER

I had no immediate assignment, which was just as well because I was, at the time, effectively useless to anyone. Thus, my first three months were devoted to improving my Kiswahili language skills, and in a crash course in sugar cane production and operational details of the settlement scheme.

Paul Bolstad

When the new settlement scheme manager, Mr. Felix Kitipo Temu, arrived, I found him to be friendly, helpful and highly competent. I became his administrative assistant, and we became fast friends while working together to understand and put right the troubles that plagued the settlement scheme. I soon found myself deeply involved in its operations.

Mr. Felix Kitipo Temu, in retirement many years later.

Paul Bolstad

AS A GO-BETWEEN

I acted as Mr.Temu’s “go-between” with the sugar factory whenever the scheme couldn’t fulfil its quota of cane. He also frequently sent me to Dar es Salaam, over 200 miles away, to obtain vehicle parts and get papers signed at the ministry. I became an expert in going from one desk to another in government offices, waiting out reluctant and/or slothful bureaucrats until I got what I needed. Because travel by bus to Dar es Salaam took a full day, and I averaged one trip a month, this aspect of my work took up much of my time. 

AS AN ACCOUNTANT

Mr. Temu’s arrival coincided with the end of the harvesting campaign of 1966. Each year the sugar company set the dates of the “campaign, which usually started when the fields and roads were dry enough to support heavy equipment and continued for about seven months when the sugar processing factory, which ran 24 hours a day, shut down for five months of repairs and maintenance. 

The Kilombero Sugar Cane factory backdropped by the Udzungwa Mountains. The factory continues to operate to this day with 45% of its production supplied by 8,000 Kilombero Valley small holders. 
https://www.kilomberosugar.co.tz/en/about-us  

The factory’s shutdown brought up the issue of payments to the farmers. Before any payment could be approved by headquarters in Dar es Salaam, we had to submit our accounts for each farmer, including how much cane was produced and transported minus charges for goods and services. But the scheme’s accounting system was a mess. Mr. Temu and I struggled for three months to make sense of seven months of receipt books and records before we satisfied the chief accountant. We then went to the bank and loaded up our Land Rover with a pile of money in small denominations and drove straight back to Sonjo. I still remember the line of expectant farmers waiting to be paid the next day. 

Subsequently, Mr.Temu asked me to devise a new accounting system based on what we had learned, one any illiterate farmer could understand when he was paid. In fact, it only required the ability to add up a column of numbers twice and get the same result, as well as using a measure of common sense. (Mr. Temu’s favorite saying was “Common sense is not common.”) I don’t remember being involved in accounting after that. 

AS A PLANNER

We spent much of each year preparing for the next harvest season, a major objective being to ensure that our cane was successfully loaded in the fields and hauled to the factory over 17 miles of bad roads. 

The reason this was so important was that the settlement scheme had to supply its quota of a minimum daily tonnage of sugar cane to the factory or risk its quota for the next harvesting season being reduced, Furthermore, if not delivered within two or three days of being cut, the sugar content of the cane began to fall, causing the factory to reject it or pay a lower rate. 

Farmers loading sugar cane.

Paul Bolstad

Trucks hauled cane to the factory on dirt roads like this.

Paul Bolstad

Thus, we had to ensure our government-owned trucks / lorries were adequately prepared for the long harvesting season by the scheme’s trained mechanic and his assistants. (We had a warehouse but no roofed garage, therefore repairs were carried out in the shade of a large tree.) We also had to order the correct quantities of spare parts for the coming season so that the scheme’s mechanics could quickly repair vehicles as needed. 

Mechanic repairing truck

Paul Bolstad

AS A BUILDER

Mr. Temu and I came up with the idea of creating a shortcut to the factory and charging a small fee for each truck using it. This required digging a ditch of considerable length to drain low-lying sections of the proposed road. Our government division advanced funds to hire laborers, and our neighbor, Major Plett, another sugar cane “out-grower,” whose trucks would also use the short cut road, provided additional labor. 

We devised a simple design for the ditch, a method of measuring the amount of earth removed by each laborer, and a way to keep the ditch drained of water while being dug (basically, start digging at the lowest spot and work upwards). We also paid each laborer as soon as he completed his day’s defined task. I remember being amazed at how much this speeded their work. The short cut was a success, significantly reducing the distance our trucks had to drive to reach the well-maintained roads of the sugar company. 

Farmers building the shortcut road.

Paul Bolstad

We next decided to construct a proper office and a much better facility for servicing vehicles and storing spare parts. This required government funds for labor and for cement and bati (corrugated metal) sheets. We already had iron frames supplied years earlier for settler housing but never used. In addition, I secured a CINVA-RAM block-making machine from the Peace Corps office in Dar es Salaam, and prepared simple designs for the two buildings.

We then found a good source of soil to use to make “stabilized soil” blocks with the CINVA-RAM machine. Then I simply showed some laborers how to use the machine and paid them for each block produced. (See how a CINVA-RAM machine works at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMK3l8_VR4Q.)

The walls were formed by laying air-dried blocks between the steel frames, which, set every ten feet, supported the corrugated metal roof. Having learned to lay bricks during Peace Corps training, I not only could teach and supervise the workers but also, much to their amazement, do the job myself—I doubt any of them had ever seen an “mzungu” (white man) lay bricks. The speed of their work improved considerably after that.  They were a great success, and we were very proud of them. 

The results of this effort were two buildings of simple but durable construction; the office is still standing and in use today, over half a century later.

Constructing the new Kilombero Settlement Scheme office building in 1967.

Paul Bolstad

The same building in 2024

Jono Jackson

YEAR 2

Transporting cane to the factory continued to be a problem. Therefore, we encouraged the farmers / settlers to obtain their own vehicles for hauling sugar cane. One farmer, who owned a duka (small store), had the financial resources to buy a new Ford 5-ton lorry. Another bought, with my financial support, an older used truck which often broke down.  But we didn’t stop at that as we also recruited several transporters from Dar es Salaam to come to the settlement scheme during the harvest season and earn 51 shillings per load. 

LOOKING BACK

I left the Kilombero Settlement Scheme in 1968 when my two years as a volunteer ended.  A year later, in 1969, the government of Tanzania concluded its financial resources were too limited to continue supporting settlement schemes and abruptly converted the Kilombero Settlement Scheme into a self-supporting cooperative. This caused the poorer settlers, including most of the coastal Waswahili, to immediately depart, leaving their holdings to be taken over by the scheme’s more successful farmers. When next I visited, in 1974, the cooperative was struggling to survive.

Settlement scheme problems?  Hakuna matata!
Paul Bolstad

Looking back on my time at the Kilombero Settlement Scheme, I for years felt it difficult to conclude that the efforts of Mr. Temu and I in putting it on a firm operational footing were in any way part of an incremental building of a rural development process. One can even say that our efforts were largely wasted because of the abrupt abandonment of the settlement scheme idea so soon after I left. (Note: That said, my discovery that the office building we constructed still exists, that it is still occupied by a cooperative, and that recent data shows “out-growers” to be supplying up to 45% of total cane intake of the Kilombero Sugar Factory (https://www.kilomberosugar.co.tz/en/about-us) makes me wonder if Mr. Temu and I, weren’t perhaps more successful than we thought.) 

In any case, I know I did the best I could and that what came of my efforts is more the responsibility of those that followed.  I am content in the memory of the rich personal experiences and relationships I had with people such as Mt. Felix Kitipo Temu, who became a friend and acted like a co-worker rather than a boss. I was fortunate that I had to learn Kiswahili, (now Tanzania’s official national language), because it provided insights into, and appreciation of, Tanzanian culture I would not otherwise have had. Furthermore, I gained a perspective on rural development in Africa that proved useful in my subsequent studies and in living and working elsewhere in Tanzania. All in all, I consider myself the chief beneficiary of the two years I spent in Tanzania on the Kilombero Settlement Scheme. 

Tourism Growth at Oldupai Gorge: A Historical Perspective

Tourism Growth at Oldupai Gorge: A Historical Perspective

Featured image: Monument to the discoveries at Oldupai Gorge of Nutcracker Man and Handy Man. (David Bygott.)

(Note: To best appreciate this post please first read: THE LEAKEYS AND THEIR DISCOVERIES AT OLDUPAI GORGE, TANZANIA https://storiesofeastafrica.com/2024/09/20/the-leakeys-and-their-discoveries-at-oldupai-gorge-tanzania/.

1965. A small group of tourists and I were in Tanzania’s Oldupai Gorge listening to an African guide talk about paleontological discoveries at the gorge. He was a young man, one of five trained by paleoanthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey, and was clearly enjoying his job. However, he really came alive at the discovery site of a nearly two-million-year-old species of ape, Zinjanthropus boisei, nicknamed Nutcracker Man because of its huge teeth. “A very important find” he excitedly announced. “Why? Because this ancient ape walked upright, just like us! This same creature may also have been the first to use rudimentary stone tools!” Then, gesturing to a small concrete monument at his feet, our guide proudly stated, “And Dr. Mary Leakey found the skull of Nutcracker man right here!”

Discovery site of Zinjanthropus boisei (Nutcracker Man). It has since been reclassified, first as Australopithecus boisei and then Paranthropus boisei. (Paranthropus means Robust Ape.)

The tour guides, in place since 1963, had been taken on to deal with a sudden surge in visits stimulated by artlcles about Oldupai Gorge and Nutcracker Man published in National Geographic Magazine. Safari companies, instead of driving their clients directly from Ngorongoro to the Serengeti National Park, were beginning to include Oldupai Gorge in their itineraries. Visitor numbers, already too high to be handled directly by on-site scientists, rose from 600 in 1963 to 3,335 in 1965, initiating a rising trend that continues to the present day.

The Oldupai Gorge Site and Visitor Center is only a short diversion from the main road about halfway between two of Tanzania’s most visited tourist sites, Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti National Park.
(Graphic by (David Bygott and Jeannette Hanby.)

Of course, increasing tourism in Tanzania primarily reflected the allure of its wildlife, especially in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Serengeti National Park. For instance, in 1965, four of five visitors to Ngorongoro and the Serengeti bypassed Oldupai Gorge entirely. Nonetheless, findings excavated there continued to attract visiters by keeping it in the news. Examples not included in a previous post https://storiesofeastafrica.com/2024/09/20/the-leakeys-and-their-discoveries-at-oldupai-gorge-tanzania/ include:

  • A 1.75 million-year-old stone circle, the oldest-known evidence of a man-made shelter from weather.
A computerized depiction of the remains of a stone circle at Oldupai. It was built by piling basaltic rocks in a ring structure and was used as a windbreak and / or base to support upright branches covered by skins and grass.
(https://www.dennisrhollowayarchitect.com/Olduvai.html)
  • Rudimentary stone tools, associated with Australopithecus apes, that are a million years or more older than those associated with Nutcracker Man and Homo habilis (Handy Man).
  • An array of extinct animal species that co-existed at Oldupai with early humans, who first scavenged their remains and later hunted them. Some of these animals were remarkably large.

Weighing up to two tons and with horns up to 2 m (6.6 ft) long, Pelorovus was one of the largest bovines (and even ruminants) to have ever lived.

(Mr. A. GNU Free Documentation License.)

At 4-5 tons in weight, Deinotherium (Greek for “Terrible Animal”), was one of the largest mammals that ever lived. Not directly related to modern day elephants, it probably browsed tree foliage in open woodlands. Its tusks weren’t used for digging but rather for removing branches that hindered feeding. Isolated populations survived until 12,000 years ago, possibly hunted into extinction by modern man (Homo sapiens).
(Concavenator. C.C. Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.)

Almost sixty years later, tourism at Oldupai Gorge is booming, with 3,000 visits a day during Ngorongoro-Serengeti’s five-month peak tourist season. (Thus, out of the nearly 1.5 million visitors to Ngorongoro and Serengeti last year at least 450,000 visited Oldupai Gorge.)

Traffic jam in Ngorongoro crater. Most of these vehicles later continued to the Serengeti National Park, a significant number visiting Oldupai Gorge along the way.
(David Bygott.)

This good news, however, brought with it a need for upgraded infrastructure, not only to handle the large numbers of visitors, but also to interpret the findings that have made Oldupai Gorge a UNESCO World Heritage Site, one of the most important in the world depicting human evolution.

This led to the construction, in 2018, by the J.Paul Getty Museum, of the Oldupai Gorge Site and Visitors Center (replacing a smaller original museum dating from the 1970’s). Situated at the very edge of the gorge and under the jurisdiction of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA), its one of the largest on-site museums in Africa.

Oldupai Gorge Site and Visitor Center.

(David Bygott.)

Backed by a view of Oldupai Gorge, an interpretive guide does his bit at the visitor center.

(David Bygott.)

Also, to better direct tourists to Oldupai Gorge, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority erected a large monument depicting Nutcracker Man and Handy Man at the turnoff from the Ngorongoro-Serengeti Road. The junction is now so well marked that even tourists unaccompanied by experienced drivers and/or tour guides will notice it.

Monument to the discoveries at Oldupai Gorge of Nutcracker Man and Handy Man.

(David Bydgott.)

Thus, the NCAA has reason to be pleased about the present state of tourism at Oldupai. However, there is still room for improvement: Most Tanzanians can’t visit Oldupai Gorge. This is partly because it’s far from population centers, but also because of the NCAA’s prohibitively high entry fees (except for school field trips). Reducing entry fees for Tanzanian citizens would help the country’s small (10% of the population) but growing middle class better appreciate an important part of their (and the world’s) national heritage.

REFERENCES

Deinoterium. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinotherium.

Ngorongoro Conservation Area. 1963, 1964, 1965. Annual report of the Ngorongoro Conservation Unit.

_________________________. 1966. Ngorongoro’s Annual Report.

_________________________. 1967. Bulletin No. 14, July.

Pelovoris. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelorovis.

The Oldupai Gorge Site and Visitor Center. https://mainlymuseums.com/post/480/the-oldupai-gorge-site-museum-and-visitor-center/.

THE LEAKEYS AND THEIR DISCOVERIES AT OLDUPAI GORGE, TANZANIA.

THE LEAKEYS AND THEIR DISCOVERIES AT OLDUPAI GORGE, TANZANIA.

Featured image: The camp of Louis and Mary Leakey at Oldupai Gorge, Tanzania, 1965.

(Continued from The Dawn of Man in Africa–Footprints at Laetoli, https://storiesofeastafrica.com/2024/07/15/the-dawn-of-man-in-africa-footprints-at-laetoli/)

To the casual eye, Oldupai Gorge, in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area, seems much like any other network of scrub-littered ravines draining (whenever it rains) dry rangeland areas in the world. However, it stands out from the rest in being a special place, a UNESCO World Heritage Site yielding up artifacts invaluable to understanding early human evolution.

Oldupai Gorge (David Bygott)

Oldupai seasonal stream, the eastern half of which flows through Oldupai Gorge, drains the eastern Serengeti Plains.

(David Bygott & Jeannette Hanby)

Oldupai Gorge’s fame reflects its unique geological history:

  • Basalt flows from Ngorongoro’s Crater Highlands which flooded the area almost two million years ago.
  • The subsequent, intermittent formation of shallow alkaline lakes attractive to a rich diversity of animals, apes and early humans (Lakebed clays aided in fossilizing their remains).
  • Periodic volcanic eruptions in the nearby Crater Highlands which added successive layers of ash that helped preserve animal and hominid remains.*
  • Geologically recent earth movements which tilted the Oldupai area, creating the stream that cut the ( up to 90 meter / 295 ft deep) Oldupai Gorge, exposing an orderly sequence of nearly two million years of layered deposits containing animal, pre-human, and human artifacts.

* Hominid–Family of erect, bipedal primates including humans together with extinct ancestral and related forms and the gorillas, chimp, bonobo and orangutan.

In this way, Nature first created, and then exposed, a treasure trove of artifacts illustrating human evolutionary history.

All that was needed now was for someone to piece that history together.

Layered deposits exposed by erosion in Oldupai Gorge.

(David Bygott)

The volcanic ash comprising most of the layered deposits in the gorge came from once active volcanoes in the Ngorongoro Crater Highlands (background).

Enter Louis and Mary Leakey. Born in Kenya to missionary parents, Cambridge-educated Louis was raised among the Kikuyu, whose language he spoke and about whom he later wrote a book. For her part, Mary, despite receiving only a sporadic education, already was a woman pioneer in the fields of archaeology and paleoanthropology. Their complimentary skills, hers in excavating artifacts and his in interpreting and publicizing them, made them an effective husband-wife team.

Mary and Louis Leakey

(Smithsonian Institution Archives. Accession 90-105, Science Service Records, Image no. SIA 2008-5175)

Beginning in 1931, the Leakeys spent most of their professional careers excavating Oldupai Gorge’s layered deposits, from the lowest and oldest (1,750,000 years) to the highest and youngest (present day).

Time sequence of depositional beds at Oldupai Gorge related to environment and human evolution.

(Jeannette Hanby & David Bygott: 1992. Ngorongoro Conservation Area Guidebook. David Bygott & Co)

Their first major find, in 1959, was a large, robust ape, which Louis Leakey classified as Zinjanthropus boisei (Later classified as Australopithecus boisei, and then reclassified as Paranthropus boisei). He initially considered it to be a direct ancestor of humans because it walked upright and was found with an abundance of faunal remains and rudimentary stone tools (so named because the stones chosen already resembled the final product and were simply altered by chipping off a few flakes). Its massive teeth (for which it was nicknamed Nutcracker Man) implied a diet of coarse plant material.

It was a welcome discovery for the Leakeys who up to this point had, whenever Louis could find enough funds to support their work, spent 28 years at Oldupai uncovering animal fossils and crude stone tools. Zinjanthropus, however, caught the world’s attention, enabling Louis to secure proper long-term financial support–from the National Geographic Society.

A reconstruction of Zinjanthropus boisei (now Paranthropus boisei)

(Cicero Moraes and Dr. Moacir Elias Santos. Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.)

But then in 1960, remains of another hominid species, discovered by Mary and her son, John, came to light. Similar in age to Zinjanthropus boisei but smaller in stature, it had smaller teeth and a larger brain, which at 600 cc was 100 cc larger than Zinjanthropus’s. This changed Louis’s mind–Here was the real direct ancestor of man, one more likely to have used stone tools. Louis named the new find, Homo habilis. Handy man.

A reconstruction of Homo habilis.

(Cicero Moraes. C.C. Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.)

Still largely ape-like, H. habilis remained partially arboreal (long arms) but ate more meat (implied by its smaller teeth) than apes, and probably scavenged and hunted smaller animals, while still eating lots of plants.

A chopper associated with Zinjanthropus (Australopithecus / Paranthropus) boisei and Homo habilis remains at Oldupai Gorge.

(Picasa. CCO 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.)

(Note: Present-day thinking is that Paranthropus boisei may, in fact, have been able to make rudimentary stone tools, which it used for butchering carcasses.)

Louis’s and Mary’s announcement that they had found a new species of early human provoked controversy as many experts thought they had too little evidence to support such an important conclusion. Only in the 1980’s, following Richard Leakey’s discovery, in 1972, of Homo habilis remains on the shores of Kenya’s Lake Turkana, did the scientific community fully accept that Homo habilis was a true human ancestor.

Richard, one of three Leakey children. Still young when this picture was taken in 1965, he was to become a noted paleoanthropologist in his own right.

The Leakey’s later excavation of Homo erectus (Upright Man) remains in higher level, 0.7 – 1.2 million-year-old, deposits in the gorge, created less of a stir because remains of H. erectus already had been discovered elsewhere (Java in 1892 and China in 1927). Nonetheless, finding H. erectus , Paranthropus boisei, and H. habilis, as well as 17,000-year-old artifacts of H. sapiens (Modern Man) at Oldupai made it possible to demonstrate the full sequence of human evolution at a single site.

Reconstruction of Homo erectus. Upright Man.

(Cicero Moraes. C.C. Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License)

At 950 cc, H. erectus had a larger brain than H. habilis. Upright Man also used more sophisticated stone tools, including hand axes and cleavers, had a more modern gait and body proportions (flat face, prominent nose) and sparse body hair, carried out coordinated hunting of medium-large animals (bovines-elephants) and possibly was the first human ancestor to use fire, have a proto-language, and practice monogamy (as inferred from males and females being similar in size). H. erectus also was the first human ancestor to spread from Africa into Eurasia.

Stone tool hand axe used by Homo erectus.

(Loctus Borg. C.C. Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.)

Stone Age Homo sapiens, represented by the 17,000 year-old remains excavated at Oldupai Gorge, used stone tools tools characterized by microliths, which are smaller, finer, and sharper than stone tools made by H. erectus. They include spear points and arrow heads. Microliths were advanced technology in their day because they were portable as well as easier to make than the hafts of spears and bows. Thus, when a spear point broke it could be easily replaced without having to make a new haft.

Microliths.

(Birmingham Museums Trust. C.C. A. 2.0 Generic License.)

SUMMARY

From the early 1930’s until Mary died in 1996 (Louis died in 1972), the Leakeys were responsible for most of the stone tool and hominid fossil discoveries at Oldupai Gorge (and Laetoli). These discoveries, which were major contributions to understanding human evolution, proved that:

  • Humans were far older than previously believed
  • Human evolution centered in Africa rather than Asia, as earlier discoveries had suggested
  • The earliest humans coexisted with a species of ape which, like them, walked upright.

They also demonstrated the relationship between the evolving features (especially brain size) of increasingly modern species of humans and the sophistication and frequency of use of stone tools.

Louis and Mary Leakey worked at Oldupai Gorge for 41 and 65 years respectively. It was time well spent.

REFERENCES

Bygott, D. 1992. Ngorongoro Conservation Area Guidebook. Tanzania Printers Ltd.

Leakeyfoundation.org.

Ward, C.V. & A.S. Hammond. 2016. Australopithecus and kin. Nature Education Knowledge 7(3)1.

Wikipedia: (a) Richard Leakey, (b) Microliths, (c) Paranthropus, (d) Aistralopithecine, (e) Oldupai Gorge, (f) Homo habilis, (g) Homo erectus.