Arusha — The Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism expects to spend Tsh.600 million on an excavation and preservation project of the famous ancient Laetoli footsteps in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.
The Laetoli footsteps in Ngorongoro were discovered in 1979 on rocks and were expertly "sheltered" by researchers from Getty Foundation of the United States of America.
The Deputy Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Ezekiel Maige told news
reporters at Karatu that the government aimed at further promoting tourism in Ngorongoro by giving it another attraction through the project.
Maige said the project started following directives by President Jakaya Kikwete.
He said initial preparations by experts from various departments were already underway and actual excavation and preservation process would start soon after.
Acting Chief Conservator for the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA), Benard Murunya said the delay for the project implementation was due to the need for sophisticated expertise to avoid risk of damage due to windy weather at the locality.
Experts have planned to do the excavation work in phases and the sheltering be done using technology that would ensure preservation and allow people to view the steps at the same time, according to Murunya.
Archaeologists, tourism stakeholders, and members of public have been pressing to excavation and exposure of the ancient footsteps to attract more visitors from within and outside Tanzania.
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How old are these footsteps? Please tell your readers exactly why they are so valuable to humanity that so much money is being spent to preserve them and give tourists a look at them. Thanks you.
The footprints of two Australopithecus afarensis were discovered in Laetoli, Tanzania in 1974-1975 by Mary Leakey and demonstrate that 3.6 million years ago early humans were walking upright on two legs. Being bipedal is a basic characteristic of being human. In the 1970s scientists still believed that humans evolved in Europe or Asia and had a recent ancestry.
Here's a quote from page 142 of "From Lucy to Language" by Donald Johanson and Blake Edgar (Simon and Schuster, 2006) that gives me goosebumps: "We will never know what Lucy's relatives thought when Sadiman [volcano in NW Tanzania] began to erupt. The footprint trail, however, shows a steady progression from south to north of two hominids, perhaps walking side by side. One set of prints is large, the other small. Were they made by a child? Partway along the trail, the hominids appear to have paused, turned, and looked westward. What caught their attention? The answer is lost in time, but after the pause they resumed walking in the original direction --- as if they knew exactly where they were going."
I mangled part of the quote from Johanson and Edgar.
"Were they male and female? Were the smaller prints made by a child?" should go after the sentence "One set of prints is large, the other small."
I have read that there has been discussion of removing the footsteps from the site and relocating them in a museum, due to concern that they will not be able to be appropriately protected in their current location. Your article suggests that the decision has been made to keep them at the original site, and to build a structure around them to both protect and allow them to be studied and viewed. Have the proposers of this building project had discussions with the local Maasai communities to ensure cooperation and understanding of the goals of this project?