Born in Africa_ The Quest for the Origins of Human Life - Martin Meredith [6]
Oldoway was once part of the shoreline of a shallow alkaline lake formed about 2 million years ago and fed by streams and rivers spilling down from the volcanic highlands to the east and south. Volcanic ash from two active volcanoes—Olmoti and Kerimasi—was periodically deposited on the lake, blown there by the prevailing wind. Over a period of about 400,000 years, the lake gradually shrank and disappeared. In more recent times—about half a million years ago—a seasonal river began to cut its way through the accumulated layers of lake sediments and ash deposits, eventually carving out a steep-sided gorge, with cliffs that in places fell 300 feet. By chance, part of the gorge followed the shoreline of the prehistoric lake, an area rich in ancient fossils, as Hans Reck discovered.
In December 1913, after nearly three months exploring Oldoway, Reck was almost ready to leave when one of his workmen reported finding a human skeleton buried in a crouched position in what was called Bed II, one of the oldest layers in the gorge wall. When he inspected the site, Reck immediately understood its significance. The skeleton clearly belonged to a modern human—Homo sapiens—but it lay at a level where extinct Pleistocene animals had been found. If the skeleton was as old as its surroundings, then it meant that it was one of the oldest human finds ever made.
‘It is impossible to describe the feelings by this sight’, wrote Reck in his account of the expedition. ‘Joy, hope, doubt, caution, enthusiasm—all this surged wildly to and fro’. In further excavations of the site, Reck could find no evidence that the body had been buried in a grave dug in more recent times. ‘The encasing soil-mass and that of the surrounding area were one and the same material. The geological conclusion became ever clearer that the man, just like the animals, was a contemporary fossil of its stratum and had not been introduced into it only later as a more recent grave’.
Reck returned to Berlin in March 1914 with the skull wrapped up in his personal linen while the skeleton followed with other fossils. An article he wrote in the Lokal Anzeiger aroused huge public interest. News of his discovery was also published in London in April by the Illustrated London News. In public meetings, Reck argued that ‘Oldoway Man’ was proof that the human race was ‘of considerably greater antiquity than has been imagined’. He speculated that the skeleton was the remains of a man who had drowned 150,000 years ago, challenging the conventional view that modern humans were no more than 100,000 years old at most. But in the controversy that followed, Reck’s claims were widely dismissed. Many of his scientific colleagues argued that the body belonged to a Maasai tribesman, buried recently in a much older deposit.
To try to settle the matter, three more German expeditions to Oldoway were launched. Two of them failed to find the gorge. The third managed to reach Oldoway, but no sooner had it arrived than war was declared in August 1914 and its members were ordered to return immediately.
Reck himself stayed in German East Africa after the outbreak of war, working as a government geologist. But in 1916, he was taken prisoner and spent the rest of the war interned in Egypt. Convinced that he had found one of the earliest examples of modern humans, he yearned to return there. However, after the war German East Africa became British territory. Under British rule, it was renamed Tanganyika, and the spelling of Oldoway was changed to Olduvai. The mystery of Oldoway Man stood unresolved. Although Reck managed to return to Olduvai in 1931, its place