Tanzania to Build Monument at Zinj Site

The government of Tanzania will construct a monument and podium to preserve the archeological site where the first species hominid Zinjanthropus boiesei skull was discovered by Dr. Mary Leakey on July 17, 1959, in Olduvai Gorge, part of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Northern Tanzania.

The plan was announced at the 50th anniversary of Olduvai Gorge at a conference held at the Arusha International Conference Center. The discovery of Zinjanthropus boisei at Olduvai Gorge, together with the oldest existing footprints at Laitole (3.6 million years of age), further verifies that the origins of the human species was in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania, and not in Asia as previously thought.

In keeping with the significance of this information, Olduvai Gorge is now known as The Cradle of Mankind, while Laetoli holds the only undisputable evidence for human bipedalism.

“Although many other important discoveries have been made at Olduvai, Laetoli and other East African hominid sites, the Olduvai Zinj will always remain a national and international icon of Tanzania’s central place in our understanding for the first time the basic outline of the course of human evolution over the last two million years,” said Peter Mwenguo, managing director of the Tanzania Tourist Board.

For 50 years since the discovery of Zinj, Olduvai Gorge has played a major scientific role as a center for research in palaeoenvironment, ecology, paleontology, archaeology, geology and many other disciplines conducted by both national and foreign research teams.

The site has continued to attract more tourists and has yield new scientific findings which have added more value to the records of human evolution. The significance of Olduvai and Laetoli has led to the elevation of the Ngorongoro Area Conservation to be nominated as a World Heritage site in 2008 to incorporate both natural and cultural outstanding universal values.