Tuesday, July 8, 2014
If our species has an ancestral homeland, this is almost certainly it. Today a dusty, uninviting dry gulch, it was once a fertile valley with a sizable lake where lived many of our most ancient ancestors, continuously, for well over a million years. Homo sapiens occupied this valley 17,000 years ago, but that’s just a dot on the evolutionary timeline. Our earliest hominin forbears, Homo habilis, were fumbling around with stone tools here nearly 2 million years ago. All told, more than 60 types of hominids are represented in this gorge, making it a veritable nursery of two-legged creatures. The entire Stone Age played out right here on this stage. And I’m just stopping by for lunch on my way to someplace else. How callous is that?
In truth, there’s no reason for tourists to linger. The active dig sites aren’t open to the public, and the artifacts that haven’t been shipped off to far-flung research facilities are housed here in a tiny museum that can be walked in a few minutes. To do the exhibits justice would still only take a few hours, but most visitors can’t stay even that long because they’re on their way to or from a wildlife safari.
We eat lunch in an outdoor pavilion overlooking the gorge, during which we enjoy a brief presentation by an adorable female docent with an adorable accent who opens by asking if, on our way to the gorge this morning, we enjoyed our free African massage. With an audience of road-weary mzungus, that’s a guaranteed laugh. After describing the incredible commitment of paleontologists Louis and Mary Leakey, who worked this site together from the mid-1930s through the late 1950s, the adorable docent suddenly points at me. “You, sir!" she demands. "How would you like to spend the next 28 years toiling in this hot sun and dry air?”
“You're asking the wrong guy,” I answer slyly. “I don’t have 28 years left.” It sounded considerably less macabre in my head than it does out loud, but people chuckle politely anyway and the docent proceeds. It’s an odd coincidence that she picked me, of all people, to throw that question to. Twenty-eight is years almost exactly how long I’ve been teaching history to young primates, albeit in climate-controlled classrooms. The Leakeys were clearly zealots.
The discoveries made at this remarkable site firmly established what had once been a highly controversial conjecture: that all humans are Africans. Indeed, every person on the planet today is descended from a handful of hominins that walked out of Africa’s Great Rift Valley about a hundred-thousand years ago.
It was also near this spot that Mary Leakey discovered my favorite artifact, the Laetoli trackway. (What, you don’t have a favorite?) Over three and a half million years ago, a trio of bipedal creatures walked across a patch of muddy volcanic ash that then hardened, preserving their footprints for eons, until Mary Leakey excavated them in 1978. (Hubby Louis had died by then.)
Only 25 yards long, this hardened trackway is the oldest set of hominid footprints yet discovered. The creatures that made them – currently classified Australopithicus afarensis – are probably not our ancestors. Rather, they were among dozens of experiments Mother Nature was then running in bipedalism, only one of which worked out in the long run. And even that, I suppose, is too early to call.
Back on the road, it takes us five hours just to get to the southern entrance of Serengeti National Park. The ride is punishing. Our Land Cruisers aren’t the same species as the ones you’d buy in the States. These are paramilitary vehicles, built specifically for safari outfitters. In addition to pop-up roofs for wildlife viewing and brush guards to protect the grill and headlights, these trucks each have two spare tires hanging off the back, 40-gallon fuel tanks, leaf-spring suspension systems that ride like an unbalanced washing machine, and intake snorkels that feed air to the engine from above the roof where it is, presumably, a little less dusty. These are doomsday vehicles, ready for the Apocalypse. They’re what you’d get if a Toyota 4Runner got knocked up by an armored troop transport on shore leave. When driven over rural Africa’s washboard “roads”, they vibrate so excitedly that objects inside the vehicles tend to hover like air hockey pucks. No matter how organized we try to be as passengers, in just a few minutes of driving time my binoculars will be under someone’s feet, somebody’s sunscreen will be in my lap, and everyone will be wearing somebody else’s hat. At this very moment, a 5-gallon water jug – one of those 40-pound plastic kegs that you flip upside down into water coolers – is roaming freely around the floor like a player on an electric football game. I can send it skating down the aisle with a touch of my finger.
Without explanation, George suddenly stops the vehicle and turns around. He hops out next to a roadside tchotchke stand and spends a few minutes negotiating with the proprietor. Then he returns with a colorful blanket, which he carefully drapes over our duffel bags in the back. “Where we are going?” he explains. “Very dusty.”
We laugh at the thought that anything could be dustier than where we’ve already been. But George isn’t laughing. He knows exactly what he’s talking about. We are soon seeing dust devils in every direction, often five or six at a time, swirling ominously across every horizon. If there’s a dustier place than this in the known universe, may it please be no closer than Mars.
Miraculously, people live here. Not many, mind you. But some. The semi-nomadic Maasai somehow manage to graze livestock in this dustbowl. (Some also accept handouts from tourists.) The Maasai live in tiny, polygynous enclaves and dwell in homes made of sticks, mud, and cow dung. Although most visitors see the Maasai as backward-looking traditionalists, I can’t help but wonder if global warming might not be turning them into exemplars of our future. In an environment this hostile, the Maasai must walk very gently on the Earth. They’re terrific recyclers, for instance. Rather than bury their dead, they leave departed ones out for scavengers – sometimes even slathering the bodies in ox blood to draw more positive reviews. The Maasai are also indomitably brave. In the land of lions and leopards they carry nothing for self-defense that's any more lethal than a long, sturdy stick. No kidding. I wouldn’t even step out of this vehicle to pee right now without the solace of a sidearm.
As a result, Tanzania now enjoys a lucrative tourist trade. Some 90,000 people visit Serengeti NP each year, mostly to see lions. The park is a 5,700 square mile subset of the greater Serengeti ecosystem, a sweeping grassland plain straddling the Tanzania-Kenya border. The park itself is a little bigger than Connecticut and a little smaller than New Jersey. In national park terms, you could fit a whole Yellowstone inside it and still have enough room left for the Everglades.
The Serengeti’s counterpart on the other side of the Kenyan border is the Maasai Mara National Reserve. Together, these two parks form the carousel of a mighty Merry-Go-Round of meat that we’ve come to call the Great Migration.
Imagine a circular parade of hoofed protein – mostly wildebeests (a.k.a. gnus) and zebras – slowly orbiting a hub just to the east of Lake Victoria, covering 1800 linear miles with each annual clockwise rotation. This moveable feast feeds countless carnivores, including lions, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, and jackals. Territorial by nature, these predators don't follow the migrating herds. They concentrate instead on fattening up whenever gravy train rolls by. And this is one massive train. By most accounts, this is the largest migration of mammals in the world. I guess that’s what makes it great.
We’re here in early July, so the southern Serengeti is disappointingly (but unsurprisingly) empty as we enter the park. The living lawn mowers have come and gone, and no respectable predator would attempt to hide in grass chomped this short and ragged. We encounter a few giraffes and ostriches, though, whose dramatic verticality makes grass height a moot point. These guys couldn’t hide in anything short of a rainforest.
Another Serengeti inhabitant that doesn’t care much about hiding is the baboon. A troop of at least 30 of them is hogging the road ahead. They are muscular and swaggering, reminiscent of short, surly bodybuilders with something to prove. I half expect them to demand my lunch money. Crafty and cantankerous, baboons are not to be taken lightly. Looking like dog heads sewn onto monkey bodies, they possess the most formidable characteristics of each species. They’ve also got attitude to spare and have been known to face down lions. It probably goes without saying that they have little respect for people or for safari vehicles, but George takes it upon himself to demonstrate this anyway.
As we approach, the baboons on the road ahead grudgingly give way except for one big male, who glances up disdainfully, then goes back to preening his paws. George punches the accelerator, launching the Land Cruiser like a PT boat. The monkey doesn’t even look up. “Watch this,” says George, leaning maniacally over the steering wheel. We’re on top of the animal in seconds – engine roaring, gravel flying, dust billowing – but the beast picks his nails, unperturbed. Someone behind me gasps. Leslie shouts, “GEORGE!” I want to shout, too, but I’m dumbstruck. Is he REALLY going to kill this monkey? The baboon holds his position so long that – and I’m not making this up – he disappears beneath the horizon of our hood. Then, just as my stomach knots in anticipation of the thumps he’s bound to make under our wheels, he shoots out from under the right front fender like a watermelon seed in a seed-spitting contest. We all exhale in relief and flop back into our seats. The baboon struts away, giving us just one backward glance that seems to say, “Better luck next time, suckers.”
As soon as we regain our composure, all eyes turn to George, who has some ‘splaining to do. “You caaahn’t hit a baboon!” he assures us, wagging a finger in the air. He’s not saying it’s illegal, mind you; he’s saying that it’s impossible. To clarify, he adds, “They’re too faaahst; too agile.” And he has just proved his point with ample, pulse-racing evidence. For the record, I would have taken his word for it.
The grass gets longer and thicker as we push north, and sure enough, lions eventually emerge. Well, emerge isn’t really the right word. Let’s just say that we find some. After driving off-road for a few minutes, George comes to a full stop in the center of what looks like the last act of a Shakespeare tragedy. Long, tawny bodies lay scattered in all directions. Many are belly-up, paws to the sky. We talk to them and take their pictures and get no response. It almost feels like someone should go out there and check for a pulse. But they’re just sleeping, which I’ve come to learn is something lions do about 20 hours a day. What’s more, they’re apex predators, at the very top of the food chain, and they have also become habituated to safari vehicles. We’re barely a blip on their radar – certainly nothing to wake up over. About the only way to get their attention right now might actually be to go out there and try to take a pulse.
Let me put that into perspective. If you sold every lion in Africa a ticket to the next Red Sox game, you could put one lion in every seat at Fenway Park and still have something like 7,000 empty seats left over for fearless Red Sox fans. And Fenway, to be frank, is not a big stadium. If you captured every lion on the whole continent of Africa and turned them all loose in, say, Gainesville, Georgia, each lion could eat a whole Gainesvillian and there would still be enough people left in town that 5,000 lions could have a whole second helping. Get the picture? That’s not a lot of lions.
(Sorry, Gainesville; just making a point.)
A 2013 report by the Wildlife Conservation Society suggests that the only way to prevent the extinction of lions may be to build fences around them. To outsiders, such as myself, this seems like a tragic and misguided solution. But let’s face it, if lions lived in the United States, they’d either be behind fences by now or hunted and poisoned to extinction. And I'd be hard-pressed to argue the point. True, many North Americans coexist with dangerous predators, such as wolves and grizzly bears. But still, those aren't lions. I've camped several times in wolf country and in grizzly country, and I'll admit to being edgy and vigilant while doing so. But there's no amount of money for which I'd sleep outdoors in lion country.
We end our first day in the Serengeti at Ikoma Wild Camp, a cluster of huts and cabins arranged around an elevated dining hall that’s so high up a flight of stone steps that it might as well be in a treehouse. This camp is a Zara property located just outside the park's boundaries. Animals from the unfenced park are free to come and go depending on their tolerance for human activity and upon the ability of camp security personnel to redirect them – or even to locate them – when they get too close. When we checked in we were instructed not to walk anywhere – not even from one hut to another – without a security escort, even if it means standing on the front stoop of our hut and shouting for someone to come get us. Each security officer, I should point out, carries nothing but a whistle, a flashlight, and a cane. I alternate between finding this amusing and unnerving.
After dinner I sit on the front stoop of my tiny hut, trying to enjoy the night sky and the cool breeze. It doesn’t go well. Every rustle of the wind, every movement of the grass, every sound I can't immediately identify sends a mild electric current through my limbs. I last about two minutes before retreating indoors. It’s hot in the hut and I’m not even sleepy, but I've decided to kill the rest of the evening in here. I was taking pictures of real live lions just a few hours ago. They’re out there in the darkness somewhere, not nearly far enough away.