Dirt & Bones

After we completed our field research outside of Tarangire National Park, we had one more week of traveling on a field trip for our Human Evolution class before we returned to Dar. We packed up our campsite and left on the morning of November 15th, and drove all day through Ngorongoro Conservation Area until we reached the small village of Endulen located in the Conservation Area. We camped outside the area hospital, where in previous years most of the anthropology students on this program had stayed to do medical anthropology projects and projects with the Maasai, seeing as there are many bomas in the area. This year, due to budget cuts and the high number of students who contracted malaria at this site, we all stayed at the Tarangire site. It turned out well, though, as all of our projects were successful and even to this date nobody has gotten anything serious, only minor stomach bugs that usually came from food poisoning. Anyway, we stayed at Endulen for two nights, and visited two major archaeological sites.

First was Olduvai Gorge, which any Anthropologist knows is an incredibly important site for Human Evolution. I was exceptionally excited to visit Olduvai. Since high school Biology, I’ve always taken a particular interest in Human Evolution, and so I’d naturally read a lot about Olduvai in text books then and for my Human Evolution both last Fall at Grinnell and here in Tanzania. It was really awesome to finally get to visit this place that I’d read so much about and seen in pictures for so many years. The gorge itself is gorgeous, as well, so just seeing the natural beauty was spectacular as well. After a brief lecture on basic information about the area, we drove to Mary Leakey’s camp on the ridge of the gorge where Louis Leakey, Mary Leakey, and their son Robert ran their research. Then we drove down into the gorge to the Zinjanthropus site. Olduvai is particularly famous for Mary Leakey’s first big find in 1959, Australopithecus bosiei, or as she named it ‘Zinjanthropus’ which means East African man. They found a skull as well as post-cranial (non-skull) remains at this site, and a year later also found remains of another species, Homo habilis, very nearby in direct association with ancient stone tools from the Olduwan tool industry. After visiting the site, taking pictures with the plaque, and looking around at the huge excavation that took place exactly 50 years ago (the 50th anniversary of the discovery was this past August), we walked up the gorge further to the two other major sites where more Homo habilis remains and stone tools were found. At one point, our professor had us ‘practice archaeology’ and we were asked to walk around the excavation site and look for stone tools and any skeletal remains. I found a ton of faunal bones and a few crude stone tools, but my exciting find was a jaw fragment and two teeth from an ancient extinct giant pig!

After visiting the excavation sites, we drove to the other side of the gorge to visit the ‘shifting sands’. This place was really perplexing. It’s just a large sand dune made of black sand in the middle of the plains. Apparently it moves about 5 centimeters every day! It was really bizarre. We took our shoes off and played on the dune for a while before piling back into the safari vehicles to make the very bumpy drive back up to our camp at Endulen.

The next day we visited Laetoli, where Mary Leakey discovered a 30-foot track way of footprints made by Australopithecus afarensis (more famously known as ‘Lucy’) in cemented volcanic ash about 3.75 million years ago. It’s an important site because it’s the earliest undisputable evidence for habitual bipedalism in our ancestors. Unfortunately, due to lack of infrastructure in Tanzania, the track way has been preserved and covered in order to conserve it. So all we really got to see were pictures in the little museum and a long strip of a mound of lava cobbles covering the place were the footprints are. Plans are in place to build a museum over the footprints so people can come and view them, but electricity isn’t dependable enough and opening the track way would require a climate controlled museum. Additionally, the site is in an extremely remote location, and there isn’t a huge tourist draw, which makes constructing a museum not really practical. It was still pretty neat to visit the site, and try to picture what it looks like under all those protective layers.

In the afternoon after visiting Laetoli, we packed up our camp at Endulen and traveled to our next site near Lake Eyasi. This journey was epic, to say the least. Not 10 minutes into our drive, it started to rain a heavy African rain that comes down in sheets and floods everything. And of course, driving on dirt roads down the extremely steep escarpment wall of the rift valley plus this rain doesn’t make for easy traveling. The going was slow, but things were okay. The rain let up after a while, but the roads were littered with deep puddles and occasionally we’d come across a river of a flash flood racing across the road. Once we were really driving down the escarpment, the road was probably at a 45 degree angle going down and really sharp hairpin turns. At one point, the vehicle in front of us had its brakes go out, and it almost toppled over on the road and could have gone tumbling down the wall. Luckily, everything worked out fine, but it was terrifying to see the car in front of us with 5 of my friends in it almost tip over. I was actually really shocked that the car didn’t end up tipping, but thank goodness it did! After this point, things just got silly. The people in that car were forced to get out and start walking while the driver worked on some repairs, because functional brakes are just not an option on an extremely dangerous road like this. Eventually the car was fixed, and caught up, and all the vehicles were together again. Not long after reaching the lake basin, the supply truck behind us got stuck in a river bed. This led to a good hour of trying to get the car out. They tried towing it out forwards with a cable, towing it out backwards, pushing it forwards, pushing it backwards, gathering stones and placing them under the tires in the mud, shoveling out water and mud. It was ridiculous. I got so incredibly muddy from helping push. Finally the car was freed, and we were on our way again. After another few hours of driving, we finally reached our destination at Eyasi around 9pm and set up camp in the dark and ate dinner late.

The next day we drove out to Mumba rock shelter, which is a site from the Middle Stone Age under a large rock outcropping. Excavations were done here that yielded archaic Homo sapiens remains as well as tools and faunal remains. It’s also a particularly interesting site because of the paintings on the walls of the rock. We climbed to the top of the rocks and had a lecture in the wind at the top of all the rocks. The view from up there was so beautiful! After our lecture, we drove out to a site near the lake shore that has all sorts of artifacts. Pottery sherds, beads, faunal remains. We walked around the site and picked up artifacts. I found a handful of beautiful pottery that had designs etched in them, and my Professor let me take two with me (he did his Ph.D. on this site and others in the area).

On Thursday we had the opportunity to visit a local tribe known as the Hadzabe, who are one of the last if not the last remaining functioning hunter-gatherer groups in the world. We had the option of hunting with the men, and of course I decided to join! We spent probably two hours running through bushes and trees, and I ended up pretty scraped up and bruised afterwards. It was a really fun time, though, even though we didn’t catch anything (probably because of how many of us there were joining them). When we returned to their camp, they sang and danced for us, which was great. Their music was so different from the Maasai music that I had been studying for four weeks, so it was very cool to hear other indigenous music from Tanzania. It made me want to come back and study more African music! Good thing I’m taking the ‘African Music’ class at Grinnell next semester! In the afternoon, we visited another local tribe called the Datoga. They’re similar to the Maasai in their practices with cattle and trade of beads. The women wear gorgeous cow-hide dresses with ornate beading designs. We also visited a Datoga blacksmith and saw how they manufacture things. They make really neat bracelets and arrowheads, which they sell and trade with other tribes.

Friday was our free day, so we all decided to go back out to the rock outcroppings near the lake shore to go hiking and rock climbing. We all climbed to the top of the tallest hill, which was an adventure. Naturally there was no trail, so we were scrambling up boulders and crawling under thorny bushes. I was scratched up even more when we reached the top, but the view was incredible. You could see for miles, over the lake and the escarpment wall stretching as far as the eye can see. Then we climbed down and did some bouldering on the big boulders at the base of the hill. Some people decided to explore up another big boulder, and went climbing up. Apparently a hyena was on their tails, though, so that was a little scary! It was a really relaxing and fun last day on our field trip. In the evening, a dancing and singing group came in from another town and performed for us. It was a really fun performance, and at the end we all got up and danced for a while.

On Saturday we drove all the way back to Arusha, and were thrust back into the ‘big city’ life, if you can call it that. But after spending 6, almost 7, weeks living basically in the middle of nowhere, Arusha can definitely be considered a big city. We went out to lunch at the Maasai café and got delicious pizza and enjoyed some cold drinks and just hung out for a while, before returning to our hotel in the afternoon to enjoy having internet again. Very early on Sunday morning, we all piled onto a bus and made the 8-hour journey back to Dar. We were all returned to our homestays, which was so nice. Our host Mama was so excited to see us again, and it was a really nice homecoming.

Seeing as it’s now my last week in Tanzania, I’m incredibly busy. I’ve got to finish my final research paper on my research for Friday, as well as put together a poster and presentation which will happen on Wednesday. On top of that, I need to buy final souvenirs and gifts for people, as well as do all the things I want to do one last time before I leave (like eat at Addis in Dar one more time - the fantastic Ethiopian restaurant downtown). Hopefully I’ll get everything done, and the week won’t be too stressful so I can enjoy my last days here. So far things have been going pretty well. The Ecology and Evolution finals were the first week we were back, and went well. I was relatively stressed about everything because we hadn’t really had class since September, so I had to remember all of that material. Other than that I’ve just been enjoying being back in the city and on campus again and working on my paper. I’ve made good progress, but I’ve still got quite a bit to do. This past weekend we spent two days on the beach, which was great. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to return to the beach on Thursday or Friday one more time. Yesterday, also, I got my hair done, and now I have long braids. All the Tanzanians keep saying ‘umependeza’ to me, which basically means ‘you look nice’, so that’s been pretty cool. It’s a pretty drastic change from my previous light brown, curly, bob. I love it though, and hopefully it’ll last long enough for all of you to see!