Olduvai Gorge
archaeological site in Tanzania
The Olduvai Gorge or Oldupai Gorge is a paleoanthropological site in northern Tanzania. Many sites exposed by the gorge have proven invaluable in furthering understanding of early human evolution. A steep-sided ravine in the Great Rift Valley that stretches across East Africa, it is about 48 km (30 mi) long, and is located in the eastern Serengeti Plains within the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in the Olbalbal ward located in Ngorongoro District of Arusha Region, about 45 kilometres (28 miles) from Laetoli, another important archaeological locality of early human occupation. The British/Kenyan paleoanthropologist-archeologist team of Mary and Louis Leakey established excavation and research programs at Olduvai Gorge that achieved great advances in human knowledge. The site is registered as one of the National Historic Sites of Tanzania.
The gorge takes its name from the Maasai word oldupai which means "the place of the wild sisal" as the East African wild sisal (Dracaena hanningtonii) grows abundantly throughout the gorge area. Twenty-five kilometers downstream of Lake Ndutu and Lake Masek, the gorge is the result of up to 90 m (300 ft) erosion cutting into the sediments of a Pleistocene lake bed. A side gorge, originating from Lemagrut Mountain, joins the main gorge 8 km (5.0 mi) from the mouth. This side gorge follows the shoreline of a prehistoric lake, rich in fossils and early hominin sites. Periodic flows of volcanic ash from Olmoti and Kerimasi helped to ensure preservation of the fossils in the gorge.
The public source identifies “Olduvai Gorge” as archaeological site in Tanzania. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Olduvai, Gorge and archaeological.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q217043. VIAF identifies the subject as 315129573. The Library of Congress control number is sh88002447. Authority coordinates are -2.983, 35.350. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Olduvai Gorge” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.