EXPERIENCE A PALEONTOLOGY TRIP TO LAETOLI NEAR NGORONGORO

This is a unique opportunity to enrich a fact-finding trip to northern Tanzania with a mind-blowing emotional experience. You will not see the actual 3.7 million years' footprints of the first men to stand erect, since modern archaeological standards demand that they are kept covered to preserve them, nonetheless AfricanMecca Safaris recommends a guided walk in the area to experience the wonder of the original finders.

Stand here on your incredible Tanzanian palaeoanthropology safari, and imagine the scene. Mary Leakey had discovered human remains and animal tracks in the volcanic cement a year before, but a team member, Paul Abell, discovered the human prints revealed by a small landslide in 1976. As he boisterously threw elephant dung in spirited horseplay, he was riveted by the sight of human footprints, preserved in concretized volcanic ash.

It appears that a party of primitive people had crossed the volcanic ash just after a rain shower. Their trail was covered by a further fall of ash which preserved them under the sediments of several million years. The significance of the trails is still debated. On your trip to Laetoli, you can see them as a cast in Olduvai Gorge Museum.

The tracks of several individuals extend over 88 feet (27 meters) and were probably left by Australopithecus aphaeresis, since the same sediment layer contains identifiable bones. But the 70 footprints pose a number of questions. They were originally thought to be a family of three, but new studies show them to be overlapping prints of four people of similar age who were carefully walking along the same track.

Their feet were arched, with straight big toes clearly visible in line with the rest of the foot, which proved they walked erectly. They did not have the opposing big toes of a tree climber, which would have stood out at an angle, and their gait was heel down first, with toes pushing forward for the next step.

The close footprints showed that they were short in stature and had not developed the longer legs necessary to cover great distances. It appears from the small skulls that man stood erect before he developed the brain power to make effective tools.

There were some very simple chipped stones discovered nearby, but in the main, the Laetolian people were concluded to have subsisted on vegetables and roots supplemented by scavenging. Gnawed bones were found, but no tool marks that might indicate hunting with more elaborate weapons. No vacation tour in Africa is complete without a visit to this birthplace of our ancestors.

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