The Olduvai Gorge in Serengeti Park
The steep-sided ravine, which stretches in the eastern Serengeti Plain of northern Tanzania, and about 30 miles long. The name came from the Maasai
word OLDUPAI for the wild sisal plant, Sansevieria robusta. The site is one of the most important prehistoric sites in the world
and has been used as an instrument for understanding early human evolution. Since the 1950s, the work which continued until now.
About 500,000 years ago, the story of this place was revealed.
The earliest archaeological deposit, known as Bed I, has produced evidence of campsites and living floors along with stone tools
made of flakes from local basalt and quartz. Since this is the site where these kinds of tools were first discovered,
these tools are called Oldowan. It is now thought that the Oldowan tool-making tradition started about 2.6 million years ago.
Bones from this layer are not of modern humans but primitive hominid forms of Paranthropus boisei and the first discovered specimens of Homo habilis.
Beds above these contained tools from a Kenyan-Capisan industry made by modern humans and are termed the Masek Beds.
(600,000 to 400,000 years ago), The Ndutu Beds (400,000 to 32,000 years ago) and the Naisiusiu Beds (22,000 to 15,000 years ago).
Also located on the rim of the Gorge is the Olduvai Gorge Museum. This Museum presents exhibitions about the Gorge’s history.
Olduvai is the location of the first monolith in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey series of books.
Olduvai is also the theme of the Olduvai theory, which states that industrial civilization will have a lifetime of less than or equal to 100 years.
The variant “Oldupai” is the Maasai word for the wild Sisal plant that grows in the gorge; some claim the more common spelling.
“Olduvai” is the result of a mishearing of the word by colonial visitors.