Olduvai Gorge

On the vast plains between the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti’s Naabi Hill Gate lies the Olduvai Gorge, a crack in the flat earth also referred to as the ‘cradle of mankind’.
Veer off the main road that carries the army of safari minibuses between the two game reserves, to the tiny Olduvai Gorge Museum, which sits on the lip of the spectacular valley. Exhibits document the archaeological significance of the area since the first excavations in 1911, when a German professor looking for butterflies accidentally came across prehistoric fossilised bones.
A red-robed Maasai tends the tiny two-roomed museum, and the displays are well laid out with clear information on the various archaeological digs. Louis Leakey and his wife Mary began digging in 1933. 26 years later they found the fragmented skull of the ‘nutcracker man’ dating back to 1 750 000 BC. A year later another skull and set of bones was unearthed. A small hunched ape-type creature with a large brain lived in Tanzania some two million years ago. It is believed to be the direct descendent of modern man. It was nicknamed ‘handy man’ because of stone tools found nearby. Then in 1979 the Leakeys made another discovery that further pushed back the date of the emergence of mankind: fossilised footprints of upright two-legged creatures – a man, woman and child – over 3.5 million years old.
A total of 35 human remains have been discovered in the Gorge, as well as those of prehistoric animals – the Deinotheruium, an elephant-type creature with downward curving tusks, and the Hipparion, a three-toed horse. The museum warrants only a 20-minute stop en route between the two reserves, but there are interesting photographs of the Leakeys, a full size copy of the set of footprints and a guide will point out the various sites on the bottom of the valley floor.