Olduvai Gorge

Over the last two million years, the plains around the now fairly dry Olduvai were submerged by a lake. This was an important watering hole, frequented by wildlife as well as by humankind's hominid ancestors. Every year, for millions of years, its seasonal fluctuations deposited fine layers of ash from the volcanoes to the east, laying down periodical stratifications in the lakebed.

A few tens of thousands of years ago, an earthquake tilted the land and a new lake formed. The inflowing river gradually eroded the layers of rock laid down by the ancient lake, incising a deep gorge in the former lakebed - Olduvai Gorge. Today, therefore, Olduvai is a geological cross-section of rock beds dating back two million years, and these preserve a virtually continuous fossil record over that period.

It was the curiously-named German Professor Katwinkle who first recognised the significance of Olduvai (or Oldupai, the Maasai word for sisal). He made many fossil discoveries in 1913, but research was abandoned when World War I broke out. In 1931 Louis Leakey returned to the site to continue his work, and recognised that Olduvai was an ideal site for paleontological excavation.

Work was slow and under-funded, and although many animal fossils were uncovered Olduvai Gorge yielded no hominid fossils until 1959. In that year, Mary Leakey discovered an undeniably human-like jawbone. The discovery resulted in great public interest, and many more discoveries were made over the next thirty years, including a set of ancient hominid footprints.

Today the gorge makes interesting visiting only for geological reasons, since all fossils are immediately removed. The museum makes for fascinating perusal, displaying fossils and recreations of the kind of extinct species that lived in the area millions of years ago.

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