Category: Louis and Mary Leakey

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/.