Olduvai discovery helped to confirm Darwin's theories

A recent excursion to the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania led me to many socio-cultural discoveries in this beautiful landscape of the East African Rift Valley, in the Eastern Serengeti plains.

In the world of science, the area is known for giving the human origins story the first specimen of a robust australopithecine. An australopithecine is an extinct genus of the hominin species.

But further, it was the first confirmation of the incredible theory of Charles Darwin and Raymond Dart that Africa was the earliest place of human origins.

Darwin’s work Origin of Species is well known, but the lesser-known works of Dart first postulated Africa as the cradle of mankind when he thought he had established the ‘missing link’ from fossil finds in South Africa.

At Olduvai, on the linguistic front, I ‘discovered’ that the area’s real name is Oldupai. In the Maa language, Oldupai is a sisal-like plant that is endemic to this region, hence the Maasai of the Serengeti referred to this area as the ‘place of the oldupai’.

The German researchers who first noticed the fossil and stone tool rich pre-historic site misunderstood its name and widely published it as Olduvai. Thus is became so named in the research and science and consequently in the popular sense.

Maa speakers, however, still faithfully stick to their indigenous name Oldupai, and science added 'Gorge' to refer to the narrow valley in the area resulting from volcanic formations.

The research area of Oldupai is inside the Ngorongoro conservation area. The area is named after a large volcanic caldera, which is a pot-like hollow resulting from volcanic activity.

The area is a World Heritage Site, listed by Unesco for its conservation of internationally threatened species such as the black rhino.

Absence of poaching here is attributed to the fact that in 1959, the government of Tanzania designated the conservation area as a multiple land use area where wildlife and humans are allowed to co-exist.

As such the nomadic Maasai are to be found inside the conservation area and poachers are to be found outside the conservation area. In many parts of the plains inside the conservation area the Maasai can be seen walking about with their animals, living a life that they have always known and enjoyed.

This has not interfered with conservation activities and has in fact been a contribution to the conservation of the black rhino which is a favourite with poachers and almost extinct in Kenya’s national parks due to poaching.

Ngorongoro enjoys a density of wildlife and the annual migration of bovids from the Maasai Mara in Kenya to the Serengeti in Tanzania, and he human origins and archaeological finds form the other reason why the area has been declared to be of outstanding universal value.

The Kenyan school curriculum made sure that all Kenyan children knew of Zinjanthropus – a relative of early man – in primary school. Its popular name was ‘nutcraker man’.

This robust hominin was first named Zinjanthropusboisei when it was discovered by Mary and Louis Leakey at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, in 1959. Upon further scientific inquisition, the species was named Paranthropus boisei, a line of now-extinct hominin that roamed in the East African region around 2.3 to 1.2 million years ago.

Skull fragments of Australopithecus boisei, both male and female, have also been found in Kenya by H. Mutua in research expeditions led by Richard Leakey at Koobi Fora in the Lake Turkana region, confirming that this gorilla-like ancestor of humans indeed lived in this region.

Evidence of the species has also been uncovered in Ethiopia and South Africa. The species is important because it shows the first signs of evolution to the hominin (human) from the wider homid species, which includes all primates.

Though its skull (cranial capacity) was typically gorilla, its teeth (canines and incisors) are very similar to those of humans. It was thought to be bipedal (walking upright) and to have lived in woodlands.

It was known as 'nutcracker man' because its molars are the largest ever seen on a human ancestor, and were thought to have been used to crack nuts in this creature's diet.

Although science has not been able to prove exactly how this creature is related to modern man, and later discoveries of the genus Homo as contemporaries in the same time period casts further doubt, its discovery still contributes to our understanding of the human evolution story, and was perhaps a most important starting point.