I have to admit, the quest for pre-1950s written text about landscape in Tanzania was extremely difficult, there is very little material written about Tanzania before 1959 and even less available. Some of the material I did find online and in the library was often about East Africa in general and did not have the vivid descriptions that I was looking for. After frantic searching I came across the book
Imagining Serengeti by Jan Bender Shetler which talks about the changing historical memory before and after the 19th century of the Serengeti, a national park in the Northeast of Tanzania. The most interesting chapter of the book was "Ecological Landscapes" which pointed out that ecologists today often describe the Serengeti as being without humans whereas stories from as early as 300 CE show that humans were in fact living in the Serengeti region. Strong evidence of human presence is visible in the types of vegetation that thrive in parts of the Serengeti. Acacia trees that thrive on regular fires (natural ones only occur in the dry season) are evidence that humans that create those fires must be in the vicinity. This is especially true in the north and western parts of the park.
Serengeti National Park
Modern Day Population map of the area
Using Africa map I was able to map out an ethnographic survey that was conducted in 1924. I layered the map onto google earth map of the same area and even then you can clearly see that though few, there were people that were living there because of the evidence of languages being spoken there. Why would ecologists try and portray the are as uninhabited? What implications do humans bring to this sort of environment?
1924 Ethnographic Map
