Ol Doinyo Lengai

Kanook – Tlingit Nation

March – 2010

Located in the north of Tanzania, one of the poorest countries in the world, deep
in Maasai Country is the only active volcano in the world that ejects “carbonate
tephras” through its record of historical eruptions. The “Mountain of God”, rises
abruptly above the broad plain south of Lake Natron in the Gregory Rift Valley…
some 102.5 miles southwest of Mount Kilimanjaro (19,334 feet) sits this 9,711 foot
mountain that’s cone-building stage ended some 15,000 years ago. Ol Doinyo
Lengai (Maasai for Mountain of God) a stratovolcano that is still very active today
and is the only volcano that periodically ejects natrocarbonatitic and nephelinite
tephras’.
Historical records dating back to 1883 demonstrate eruptions, with flows being
recorded in 1904 and 1910, and again in 1913 and 1915. A major eruption took
place in June of 1917 ejecting volcanic ash to a distance of 30-miles, with a similar
eruption over a period of several months in 1926, and between July and December
of 1940 whereas ash was found over 62-miles away in Loliondo, the District
Commissioner location for the District of Ngorongoro.
On August 14th, 1966 it erupted again, spewing forth a thick column of black ash
some 3,000 feet above the volcano that drifted towards Lake Natron, two geologists
J.B. Dawson and G.C. Clark visiting the crater a week later reported seeing a
discharge of gas and whitish-grey ash and dust from the center of the pit. During
July 12th 2007 a series of daily earth tremors in Kenya and Tanzania hit parts of
Nairobi City, the latest shaking the ground on July 18th, at 8:30 PM measuring 6.0 on
the Richter scale, it was suspected that the movement of magma through Ol Doinyo
Lengai…on September 4th, 2007 it finally erupted sending a plume of ash and steam
at least 11 miles downwind and covering the north and west flanks in fresh lava
flows. The eruption continued intermittently into 2008, whereas on March 5th, a
major event taking place – it wasn’t until March/April 2009 that it seemed the
activity has ceased.

View of crater looking to the NW. Note the people on the small peak.
6/18/20008
Located to the northwest of the Mountain of God are the Serengeti Plains, home of a steep
sided ravine some 30 miles long and 295 feet deep, the Olduvai Gorge is known as the
cradle of mankind.
 Serengeti Sunset
The primary Olduvai Beds are in a lake basin about 16-miles in diameter and
about 17-miles west of the Mountain of God, whereas the rocks under the basin
date back over 5.3 million years ago (“mya”), within these beds seven major Beds
are ranked from the oldest to the youngest – Bed I (2.1 mya, 197’ thick), Bed II
(1.15 to 1.7 mya), Bed III, Bed IV, the Masek Beds, the Ndutu Beds, and the
Baisiusiu Beds.
Bed I contains various fauna and evidence of the Olduwan tool industry, whereas
the skeletal remains have been assigned to the Homo Habilis (handy human) an
Australopithecus Boisei families where campsites and what is believed to be a
“butchery site” have been excavated from this Bed. The hominid living sites in Bed
I are found mainly where streams from the volcanic highlands carried fresh water to
the Olduvai lake, the remains of this ancient civilization were preserved by the ash
fall from the nearby volcanoes, and the varying depth of the lake. Along with the
other artifacts were circles of lava rocks, suggesting that crude shelters were part of
their lifestyle.
Beds II through IV were normally found in what would have been rivers and
streams therefore it is assumed that many of the sites were washed away. Bed II is
66’ to 98’ thick, and has two main divisions of rock layer, upper and lower, that
were separated by an erosion break. The lower part of Bed II is similar to Bed I,
whereas the upper part was formed after fault shifts had reduced the ancient lakes
size. It is this part of Bed II that the development of the ancient stone tool industry
(“Acheulean”) was found, an industry associated with the hominins during the
Lower Palaolithic epoch across Africa and much of Western Asia and Europe,
typically found with Homo erectus remains. Found in this layer in Bed II were the
remains of Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus and Australopithecus Boisei.
Mary Douglas Nicol Leakey in 1959, on a day her husband Louis Seymour Bazett
Leakey had a headache, found fossilized parts of the upper teeth and skull of a
hominid no one had recorded before, eroding out of an area near Bed I. I the next
few weeks the Leakey’s found more than 440 pieces to comprise an almost
complete skull – not too different from remains found in South Africa by Raymond
Arthur Dart in 1924 and by Professor Robert Broom in 1936. They believed their
find was a new category of hominids and called it Zinjanthropus boisei and
suggested it lived 1.75 mya making it the oldest hominid yet found.
 In 1960, Mary and her son Jonathan Harry Erskine Leakey found another, smaller
form of hominid at Olduvai that they believed was different and more advanced,
this they called Homo habilis it appeared to be the first human to use tools. The
designation of these two new groups raised a great deal of controversy, whereas
their Zinjanthropus has since been grouped into the Australopithecine genus, where
the South African finds also went, but in a different species. Homo habilis is now
widely accepted, dating back about 2-million-years.
The 1972 discovery by the Leakey’s son Richard Erskine Frere Leakey of another
Homo habilis, that dated back 1.9 mya, helped confirm this as it also supported a
prior belief of his father that the Homo genus DID NOT evolve from
Australopithecus, but that there was a parallel lineages of hominids developing at
the same time.
Beds III and IV were a result of fault shifting and erosion, with their age from 1.15
mya to 600,000 years ago, they have a combined thickness of 98 feet and are
made up of sediment from the streams that fed Olduvai Lake. During a period of
major faulting and heavy volcanism roughly 400,000 to 600,000 years ago the
“Masek Beds” were formed, they are up to 82 feet thick and like Beds III and IV
contain mostly stream sediments with some wind-worked tuff. Based on the
deposits found in this layer it is supposed the climate was much like it is today, only
one major archaeological site was found in these beds most made up of the stone
tools. The “Ndutu Beds” were formed by faulting, erosion and the filling of the
gorge around 32,000 years ago which consists of mainly wind-worked tuff – two
sites have been worked here dating back to the Middle Stone Age.
The last of the archaeological Beds is the “Naisiusiu”, that lays at the bottom of
the Gorge at what is now the present depth. It only has a depth of 33 feet, and like
the others is made of mostly Aeolian tuff (wind-worked), albeit it contains one site
that has micro-lithic tools and one complete Homo Sapien skeleton, both of which
date to 17,000 years ago.
 The great yearly migration across the treeless Serengeti
The Mountain of God, the only active volcano resides in the area of the Serengeti,
and its ejecta of carbonate lava which when exposed to air changes from black to
white and resembles washing soda. As it settles on the plains, and is rained it turns
into a calcium rich hardpan that has the consistency of cement – whereas the tree
roots cannot penetrate the layer, consequently the “treeless” plains of the
Serengeti.
The lavas from the Mountain of God are
rich in the rare sodium and potassium
carbonates, nyrereite and gregoryite, and
due to this rare composition is erupted at
relatively low temperatures around 932°F
to 1,112°F…where the temperature is so
low that molten lava appears black in the
sunlight, rather than having the red glow
common in most lavas. It is also more
“fluid” than silicate lavas, because of the
unstable nature of the lava, and is
susceptible to rapid weathering the
volcanic landscape around Ol Doniyo
Lengai is different from any other in the world.
South of the Mountain of God is the caldera of a super-volcano, one that exploded
and collapsed in on itself some 2 to 3 million years ago, it is 2,000 feet deep and its
floor covers 100 square miles, estimates of its original height range from 15,000 to
19,000 feet high. When it collapsed it created a unbroken, un-flooded caldera.
 The Mountain of God and the noted
volcanoes in the region all sit within the “Great
Rift Valley” which cuts a huge swath in the earth,
from north of Baalbeck, Lebanon to the
Mozambique Channel a distance of over 4,000
miles…it is known as the greatest land surface
rupture on the planet, a geological feature that
can be seen very clearly from our neighbor the
moon. For over 40 million years it has been in the
making, whereas it contains the lowest point of
land in the “Afar Depression-510 feet below sea
level) and is flanked by some of the world’s
highest and biggest volcanoes including Mt
Kilimanjaro at 19,340 feet, and some of the
world’s largest lakes such as Lake Victoria and the
2nd largest lake in the world, and Lake Malawi one
of the deepest, and in the Red Sea provides a
gateway between the Orient and Europe.
Its geological movement has resulted in a
rich diversity of terrain and wildlife, and in northern Tanzania some of the oldest
specimens of humans. The plains of the Serengeti and Masai Mara, formed by
volcanic ash, support the largest concentrations of big animals found anywhere.
As noted, mankind may have even evolved in the Great Rift, whereas hominid
fossils have been discovered dating back over 3 million years ago, whereas
archeologists such as Louis and Mary Leakey in the Olduvai Gorge some 27 miles
west of the Mountain of God have peeled back the layers of the earth to exposed
the layers of time.
Its proximity to the ocean and its warm moist air, altitude and other topographical
features, and its soil structure has created vegetation ranges from sweeping
grassland plains to original tracts of lush equatorial forests, whereas along the coast
lies a flat, low-lying region with warm breezes from the Indian Ocean and you see
the fertile coastline as it gradually yields to higher altitudes of lush forest, which
received abundant amounts of rainfall. Moving westward into the interior the
terrain changes dramatically to become the semi-arid “Maasai Steppe”, which is
made up of enormous grassland plains that sweep to the horizon.
 The eastern arm of the Rift Valley in Tanzania, which wraps around the
Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Lake Manyara, divides the steppe from the
3,937 foot high central plateau which makes up most of the rest of Tanzania – the
Ngorongoro region contains the super-volcano the Ngorongoro Crater a 100 square
mile caldera, and a few miles northwest of the crater is our Mountain of God.
Moving northeast from here we find Mt Kilimanjaro, and below the majestic peak is
found a series of mountain ranges that curve east, and turning south they
eventually turn southwest – these ranges show traces of the equatorial forests that
used to extend right across all of Africa.

Maasai Steppe
The “Maasai Steppe” is a arid region, because of the warm to hot and dry climates
where the only semi-permanent streams in the region are found in the high rainfall
forests of the Ngorongoro highlands. Most of the year-round water is pulled from
the ground from wells ranging from a shallow dept to medium depths. During the
dry season, herders have to drive their livestock long-distances in search of surface
water, in-turn the same is true for the human population. Between 1968 and 1980
the Maasai Range Development Commission completed a hydrological survey of
“all” Maasai Districts, but to this day deep wells and shallow well locations that were
found, have never been drilled.
According to the 1988 National Population Census, the Maasai Steppe population
placed 305,427 inhabitants within its boundaries, in 2002 the census count climbed
to 611,446 whereas it has been mostly influenced by growing immigration patterns
from other parts of Tanzania, albeit there is plenty of room, water remains the
critical impediment.
 The last livestock census showed that within the Massai Steppe there are 956,541
cattle, 1,024,156 small stocks (sheep and goats), and 51,897 donkeys – this survey
was done in 1994.
To supply water to this arid area will require massive amounts of funds, and as
there is no viable return for the funds none have been forthcoming – as for any
allotments from the government this is entirely out-of-the-question as the demands
for state-funds are enormous, and water is too far down the list.

Mountain of God
Home to the “Masai God” – Eng’ai, who signals her wrath with eruptions and
drought, Ol Doinyo Lengai is a mountain to be respected and honored as it juts
above the parched Rift Valley floor with pointed hornitos and grayish flows marking
its recent activity.
Ol Doinyo Lengai (ol doyn-yo len-guy) is a place of pilgrimages for Tanzania’s
herders, who often make the long journey to entreat their God, “Eng’ai” for the
most important things in their world: rain, cattle, and children. In one of the more
common rituals a Masai elder leads a group of barren women to the base of the
mountain, where they pray to Eng’ai to bless them with child.
Whatever its power, the mountain casts a strong spell over all who visit. “It’s
absolutely incredible. Like being on the moon,” says Celia Nyamweru of St
Lawrence University in upstate New York, who has climbed the mountain a dozen
times. And then there is Carsten Peter, who has spent his career dodging lava
bombs around the world, who has climbed it four times in the past 11-years. “I’m
addicted to that volcano.”