Olduvai Gorge

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Olduvai Gorge
Colored flags mark the locations of hominine fossils. The first fossils of Paranthropus boisei and Homo habilis were also unearthed in this area .

The Olduvai Gorge is a canyon in northern Tanzania . In the Maasai language , the gorge is called Oldupai , named after the plant called "Ol Tupai" ( Sansevieria ehrenbergii ) that often grows in it . Together with the Afar triangle in Ethiopia and sites in the South African province of Gauteng , it is considered to be the “ cradle of humanity ”. The gorge became internationally known through the discovery of numerous Pleistocene fossils from early relatives of anatomically modern humans . The gorge also gave its name to the Oldowan culture , from which the oldest Stone Age tools come.

location

The gorge begins about 20 kilometers northwest of the Ngorongorocrat . It is the part of the East African grave breach (including Great Rift Valley called) and can be described as a canyon , the eastern plains of the Serengeti and the surrounding slopes of the grave breach drained. The Olduvai Gorge is almost 50 kilometers long and up to 100 meters deep.

description

Not only was the gorge formed by the rainwater running off, but the entire surface of the earth around the gorge was gradually eroded over hundreds of thousands of years. The fossilized remains of various animal species that have been stored there for millions of years are therefore now open in many places on the surface, including huge relatives of our today's sheep and pigs . Since its "discovery" by European researchers at the beginning of the 20th century, this has repeatedly prompted research groups to search specifically for animal fossils and soon also for the remains of early pre-human species. Inspired by the discovery of a three-toed original horse ( Hipparion ) by the German neurologist Wilhelm Kattwinkel (1866–1935) in 1911, Hans Reck visited the gorge in 1913 and discovered parts of a 20,000-year-old skeleton of Homo sapiens (archive number OH 1 = Olduvai hominid 1 ). But it was only Mary Leakey and her husband Louis and their son Jonathan who actually made sensational finds from 1931: initially numerous primitive stone tools, which are now known as Oldowan, in 1935 with OH 2 a hominini fossil (a skullcap) and later various finds from Paranthropus, among others boisei , Homo habilis and Homo erectus .

The fossilized layers of the Olduvai Gorge have been divided into biostratigraphic banks . Paranthropus boisei and Homo habilis were found in the bottom bank 1 . Bank 2 above, separated by layers of tuff, contains fossils of Paranthropus boisei , Homo habilis and Homo erectus , from the next higher bank 3, Homo erectus was recovered.

In the vicinity of the Olduvai Gorge there are also the excavation area of Laetoli and the more recent sites of Makuyuni , a small place between Lake Manyara and Arusha .

Olduvai theory

The "Olduvai theory" by the engineer Richard C. Duncan and the geologist Walter Youngquist, published shortly before the turn of the millennium, was related to an extremely pessimistic interpretation of the theory of the global maximum oil production . According to the extremely Malthusian predictions, the increasing consumption and decreasing availability of oil would lead to a collapse of industrial civilization by 2030. From 2050 only about two billion people could survive on a pre-industrial energy level, which is why the Olduvai Gorge was used as the eponym for the thesis. However, according to the thesis, the global energy supply should have collapsed before 2009 with a global conflict originating from the Middle East. Contrary to the predictions, however, the oil production continued to rise after 2006 (the year with the predicted production maximum).

Trivia

In the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey , the monolith appears to the pre-humans in the Olduvai Gorge.

literature

  • David Martin: Olduvai and Laetoli. African Publishing Group (International), Harare 2002, ISBN 1-77916-048-8
  • Robert Blumenschine et al .: Late Pliocene Homo and Hominid Land Use from Western Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Science Volume 299 (February 21, 2003), pp. 1217-1221

See also

Individual evidence

  1. The Peak Of World Oil Production And The Road To The Olduvai Gorge by Dr Richard C. Duncan (2000). Accessed September 4, 2015
  2. Encircling the Peak of World Oil Production - Richard C. Duncan and Walter Youngquist, June 1999, accessed September 4, 2015
  3. The Olduvai Theory of Industrial Civilization , accessed September 4, 2015
  4. ^ The Post-Petroleum Paradigm — and Population by Walter Youngquist (1999) , accessed September 4, 2015
  5. ^ RC Duncan: Evolution, technology, and the natural environment: A unified theory of human history. In: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting, American Society of Engineering Educators: Science, Technology, & Society. 14B1-11 to 14B1-20, 1989.
  6. Effects of a final oil crisis on the world population (PDF; 1.5 MB), accessed September 4, 2015

Coordinates: 2 ° 59 ′ 0 ″  S , 35 ° 21 ′ 0 ″  E