Oldupai is a Maasai word referring to the “wild sisal”, a hardy plant capable of surviving long periods of drought. It grows in and around the famed gorge. The internationally recognised name Olduvai is derived from Oldupai, the Maasai name associated with the plant and the area.
It was the dedicated work of Louis Leakey and his wife, Mary, that helped make Olduvai famous throughout the world. In 1959, Mary discovered the remarkably well-preserved skull of an early hominin, a find that transformed scientific understanding of human origins.
However, scientific interest in the gorge had begun decades earlier during the period of German colonial rule in what was then Tanganyika. German researchers were among the first to bring the extraordinary concentration of fossils at Olduvai to the attention of the international scientific community.
What emerges is a story that is both compelling and unique.
The present-day on-site museum tells this fascinating story through displays tracing the history of discoveries at the gorge. One of its earliest chapters involves the German entomologist Wilhelm Kattwinkel, who reportedly came across fossil remains in 1911 while exploring the area. Fossil material was subsequently taken to Berlin, and the scientific significance of the gorge began to attract wider attention.
Kattwinkel’s discovery was followed by a German expedition led by Prof Hans Reck, a geologist and palaeontologist. In 1913, Reck discovered a human skeleton within the deposits of Bed II at Olduvai. Although some of his initial conclusions about the age of the skeleton were later challenged, his work intensified scientific interest in the gorge.
Reck and other researchers also helped document the geology of an ancient lake basin where, over immense periods of time, successive layers of sediment and volcanic ash accumulated. Animals and other organisms that became trapped or buried in the lake margins were preserved, with erosion eventually exposing fossils millions of years later.
In 1931, Louis Leakey returned to Olduvai with Reck, further exploring its fossil-rich deposits. Their work contributed to growing international interest in the gorge and fuelled an increasingly vigorous scientific debate about human ancestry and evolution.
Louis and Mary Leakey later became internationally renowned for their work at Olduvai and elsewhere in East Africa. Their discoveries, together with those of other researchers, fundamentally changed scientific understanding of humanity’s origins.
Among the most remarkable later discoveries were the Laetoli footprints, found in northern Tanzania during research led by Mary Leakey in the 1970s. The ancient footprints provided extraordinary evidence that our early ancestors were walking upright millions of years ago.
As discoveries continued across Africa and other parts of the world, scientists came to understand that human evolution was not a simple, linear progression. It was a complex and branching story in which different hominin species lived at overlapping periods before Homo sapiens ultimately became the sole surviving human species.
It is an extraordinary journey: From our distant ancestors walking across the ancient landscapes of East Africa to modern humans eventually reaching the Moon and exploring outer space.
What a remarkable distance humanity has travelled from the ancient world preserved at Oldupai. And there is much more to the story one we shall continue to explore in future chapters of this monthly column.
