OLDUVAI GORGES

Apart from the crater, which is a national park, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area extends two-thirds of the way west along the volcanoes. It is a 40 km long fracture in the Serengeti plains, about 100 m deep and covering about 250 km2. The Olduvai Gorge has been called the "Cradle of Humankind" and the "Garden of Eden", as hominids from Australopithecus boisei have been found here, over 3 million years old. The surrounding plain was a lake nearly 2 million years ago, which helped them and the animals to settle in search of water.

Large numbers of black rhinos lived in the area until the early 1980s. The great migration usually stays here from December to March. The vegetation is completely different, it is the beginning of the Serengeti plains. The beauty of this country is unforgettable, because of its lights, its plains where volcanoes form the horizon of its exceptional wildlife (including giraffes and cheetahs that were missing in the crater) and because of the endearing people who inhabit it: the Maasai.

Cradle of humanity. In 1913, two years after the discovery of the throat and the first fossilized bones by Professor Katwinckle, an entomologist found a Homo sapiens about 10,000 years old. The Leakey couple, supported by the British Museum and the Royal Society, excavated the site in 1930. Its interest lies in the strata that are easily accessible because they have been left exposed by erosion, from the current soil to those dating back 2 million years. The plain surrounding the gorge seems to have been a huge lake, where animals and then humans have always lived, despite the successive eruptions of the neighbouring volcanoes. By collecting animal fossils and tools at all heights, we can understand the slow evolution of certain animal species, but also of human techniques. In bed number 1, dating from 1.7 to 2 million years ago, just above the black magma floor, were found in 1959 the skull of the robust australopithecus(Zinjanthropus boisei) and very rough tools that the Leakeys classified as products of the Oldoway industry. The skull showed a very low intellectual capacity and a strong thickness of the superciliary arch. In 1960, two skulls from the same period but of greater volume, from the genus Homo(habilis, then sapiens), were discovered, thus tripling the known age of men. Since then, about fifty fossilized hominid bones have been discovered along the gorge, and the excavations continue, thanks to the University of Dar es Salaam, helped by American universities. The oldest traces of human habitation have been uncovered, in the form of million-year-old stone circles. In 1978, the Laetoli site was discovered with footprints dating back 3.8 million years. Today the site is protected and not open to the public

Visit. A small museum gathers explanations, discovered pieces and copies of those sent to the National Museum of Dar. The Olduvai Gorge is highly protected to avoid fossil theft. However, it is possible to go down there, accompanied, where the skull of the australopithecus was discovered. To see the fossil deposits, tools or remains of prehistoric animals, mammoth tusks, horns or skeletons of extinct prehistoric animals, it is necessary to ask for a permit.