A glimpse into the Stone Age

Most people know Tanzania for it’s infinite savannah filled with wildlife, multiple mountain ranges, and exotic beaches on the spice island of Zanzibar. Did you know it is also home to some of the most well-known archealogical sites on the continent? Lucky for us we are staying about 20 km down the road from Isimila Stone Age Site, where some of the most significant Stone Age finds in history were unearthed and identified in 1950! The tour starts off in a small museum filled with finds from the excavations; tools that are believed to be 60,000- 100,000 years old as well as fossilized animal bones of an extinct form of hippopotamus with protruding eyes and giraffe with a shorter neck. 

It is believed that the area was a small lake which would have been a perfect place for hunting the wildlife coming to drink water. The tools found at the site (bow and arrow, spears, axes and cleavers) back up this theory. Afterwords we head out on a short hike to the excavation site which thanks to time and soil erosion has turned it into the large canyon that we saw today. We finished our walk through the canyon right at sunset which added an extra feeling of warmth to our already scenic view.