How has the past marked the landscape?

The Serengeti is rich in history....and it goes as far back as the beginning of mankind. One of the most interesting places in the Serengeti is the Leoteli footprint site. The majority of the Laetoli footprint site was excavated in 1978. Until then, the oldest known footprints of human ancestors were tens of thousands of years old. But this trail, some 80 feet long and preserved in cementlike volcanic ash, had been made by some of the first upright-walking hominids. An almost unimaginable sequence of events preserved what paleontologist Ian Tattersall calls a fossil of human behavior -- prehistoric walking.

Initially, a nearby volcano called Sadiman erupted a cloud of fine ash, like beach sand, that left a layer on the landscape. Then a light rain fell onto the ash to create something like wet cement -- an ideal material for trapping footprints. Birds and mammals left a great number of prints, but, spectacularly, so did a pair of hominids, one large and one small, trekking across the ash. (Some analysts conclude that it is possible to detect the trail of a third, smaller individual whose tracks overlap the footprints left by one of the others.) A subsequent eruption from Sadiman dropped more ash, sealing the footprints like a laminated driver's license. Finally, erosion over millions of years unveiled the prints for Hill and other researchers in Mary Leakey's group to discover in 1976. 

Another site is the  Gong Rock, located on one of Serengeti's Kopjes. It is the oldest instrument yet discovered and its many dents tell us a story of how early man invented music playing simple melodies on the metallic sounding rock. The masaii later used it to make sounds to warn or contact other warriors. 

 

Questions Raised by the Proposed Serengeti Highway

            The proposed Serengeti highway is the part of my region that I have chosen to explore in this region. The Tanzanian government has approved the planning and building of a large commercial highway across the Serengeti National Park. This road would link two commercial areas in Tanzania, the Lake Victoria region on the north west with eastern parts of Tanzania such as the commercial capital of Dar es Salaam. This proposed highway would bisect the Serengeti National Park in two and would run in the migration path of the wildebeest and zebra populations during the rainy season. In total about 2 million animals may be affected by the building of this highway. 

            The highway could have disastrous consequences for the wildlife that makes this annual trek but it would also have a negative effect on the wildlife that lives in this area. Commercial and personal vehicles travelling down this road would increase the number of road kills that happen each year, it might introduce new diseases as humans get closer to animals and it could also change parts of the ecosystem as animals begin being affected by the close contact of humans.

             The proposed highway brings up some major questions about the use of land, the choice between conservation and economic gain and the value of Serengeti National Park as part of the culture of heritage in Tanzania. As I have mentioned before the Maasai were pushed out of areas like the Serengeti because of concerns about the preservation of the animals and wildlife that existed there. If the decision was made that this nomadic tribe would cause damage to the environment how can this highway be justified? How is the Tanzanian government going to deal with the loss of animal life and how do they propose to prevent it?  What will the backlash in loss of tourism to the area be? Will the Serengeti lose its world heritage site status?

Sources

-       http://thecitizen.co.tz/component/content/article/37-tanzania-top-news-story/2762-government-on-why-serengeti-road-is-a-must-project.html

-       http://www.savetheserengeti.org/news/highway-news/scientific-impact-statement-survey/#axzz12jg0x6kD

-       http://www.zgf.de/?id=72&reportId=85&language=en

Book Discussion

The Language of Landscape by Anne Whiston Spirn is an interesting book about how the landscape around us is alive with meaning; these meanings can be understood like a language. Landscape is has its own grammar, structure, metaphors, modifiers and processes that are similar to the way that language is constructed. To fully experience and understand landscape we must speak the language through which this meaning is carried.

Spirn’s writing style is beautiful and poetic throughout most of her book, it weaves a story through her experiences and illustrations that she uses to make her point. In her description of the mountains in Japan (Spirn 1998; 134) Spirn poetically presents the mountains of Japan. In her description she not only weaves in their geographical features, she also provides the history of the mountains, the context in which they exist today and the culture that they have helped create. What emerges is a complete picture of why the mountains have formed the way they have, their significance in Japanese culture and the consequences that this specific landform has had on the living habits of the people, their way of life and what landscapes they have created in response to the presence of those mountains. I feel that this type of writing gives me an overall sense of what is happening but lacks in detail, what are the myths about mountains that lead her to the conclusion that they are considered powerful? Specifically how do the mountains affect other features of landscape?

In other parts of the book she loses the poetic flare as she goes into longer case studies, these parts I feel are the richest parts of the book. One of the most compelling of these parts was towards the end in chapter 9, in this chapter the author focuses on the city of Berlin after World War II. Spirn vividly describes the landscape of Berlin, she focuses on how the landscape has been destroyed, built up and reconfigured in order to forget the past and move on. In 1966 when she visits Berlin is still feeling the aftereffects of the war, the buildings have gunshots through them and most of the city lies in ruins (Sprirn 1998; 242). When she revisits in 1993 the change is drastic, all that is left is Checkpoint Charlie and the memory of the city has been carefully crafted. There is a plaque that commemorates the worker’s uprising in 1953, that has deliberately been made to look old (Spirn; 244), this manipulation shows how landscape can be made to evoke a distant memory, how it can reshape a story.

The other book that I read was Economies and the Transformations of Landscape by Lisa Cliggett and Christopher Pool. They deal specifically with landscapes that have been shaped by human beings as a direct result of the flow of capital. Money changes landscapes as economic need or gain forces land use to change, money also stimulate factors such as population growth, living space and types of industries. What may start of as grazing fields may turn into farm land, once exhausted it may be turned into an urban area which may turn into a waste disposal area. The most fascinating part of the book for me was the chapter dedicated to the decline of Mobile Pastoralists. This section of the book touched on the Maasai people who are my main focus in the Serengeti area that I have chosen to focus on in Tanzania.

We learn that the landscape in which the Maasai lived in East Africa was changed drastically with the introduction of colonial states, they no longer were free to roam nomadically as they were used to. They were now segmented within German Tanganyika and British Kenya. They lost a majority of their land to European farms and ranches and were forced to graze in game reserves like the Serengeti which Britain created in 1954 (Cliggett 2008 ;155). This first economic induced transformation was one of many. The Maasai have been increasingly been pushed off land that they have historically used. As a need to grow the tourist industry and the increasing pressure from conservationists from the west grew, the Maasai were pushed off protected national parks (Cliggett 2008;156). They have had to switch from a nomadic lifestyle to a more agricultural type of lifestyle on ranches where they raise cattle. This has had a profound effect on the landscape as some areas are intensely grazed while others such as those in national parks remain relatively wild.

I am not convinced landscape speaks a language per se, rather I think that landscape tells a story. It tells of what went on, what is it to come and what is happening presently. Landscape often negates the kinds of life that exist in a particular place, the culture that springs up, the everyday decisions that people and animals make. Landscape is also a storage of memory, it tells of the secrets that people wish to hide and it can be deceptive, it shows the history they wish to remember and it is a reminder of things that are deemed best forgotten. It is not a language that one has to learn because you can discover these things about a landscape if you study the history, the culture of a place, the people that live there and by carefully analyzing elements of the landscape itself.

How does Africa Map help address sensory issues in landscape

Africamap helps to address sensory issues in landscape by providing canvases through which we can imagine the taste, smell, touch, sound and sight of the landscape that we are looking at. The area that I am looking at on Africamap is the northeastern part of Tanzania, specifically the Serengeti National Park. Through Africamap we can imagine how the Serengeti looks. The way that I first imagined how the Serengeti looked was through the use of the landscape use map layer. 

The Serengeti National Park

This land use map layer helps me imagine what the Serengeti looks like by evoking certain images. The brown on the map of the Serengeti area is land that is herbaceous and protected. This conjures up images of a serene savannah  landscape that is not inhabited by people and has not been damaged by people through farming who have lived in the area. The next largest color-coded areas are in white, this signifies that there is no land use, further adding the serene image of the Serengeti national park.

Land Use

 

While the Serengeti is virtually uninhabited I know that people do live in the area, their presence is shown through the light brown color-coded areas, this color is for intensive pastoral practice. I know from my research that the nomadic Maasai people live in this area and that they often keep large herds of cows with them as they travel. This is evident through the spread of the spots of light brown that are scattered in this area. This speaks to our sense of smell because rather than a fresh smell of the outdoors in these areas we can imagine that the air may smell of cow dung, the cooking fires of the of the Maasai people, the smell of their food as they cook it as well as other man-introduced smells.

Another way that we can imagine the landscape through our senses is through the maps of malaria epidemic and seasonal duration. I chose these maps because malaria is such a sensory disease. You hear as mosquitos buzz around you, you feel the sting of the mosquito, the itch of the bite, and when malaria overcomes you feel the effects through a fever and other symptoms. The map of malaria epidemic shows of there is little water in the area, as well as low populations. Mosquitoes need water to breed and people to infect in order for malaria to spread. This is because most of the Serengeti national park is savannah, there are small lakes and streams but they are highly dependant on the seasonal rains and there are not many people. You can imagine hearing the sounds of the mosquitoes buzzing softly in this space.  

The map of the seasonal variation of malaria allows us to imagine various things, over 4 months between outbreaks of malaria we can imagine that the land is arid and dry for a good part of the year because when rain does not fall there are few breeding grounds for mosquitoes. In those months the land is dry and dusty, with little moisture even in the air. The terrain is full of bushes and dead and dry plants. These plants bloom when there is rain and are completely revived, creating beautiful green pastures and lakes full of water that are teaming in life. The mosquito and other animals can once again breed and produce young.

Maleria Epidemic

Malaria Seasonal Variation

A Historical View of Tanzania

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

Africa Map - Tanzania

I began using Africamap by zooming into the map so that Tanzania was in the center of the page and as large as possible while still fitting on the page. When I began to add layers to my map that is when I started to run into some problems. The layers were showing up on the map but I had no idea what they meant because for the life of me I could not find any key to the maps when I was viewing them. After a few minutes I figured out that if I went back to the list of map layers and clicked legend next to the map, the key would appear on that page. To see the legend on the map just hit the view tab at the top of the page and the key should appear on that page, you can then change the parameters of the key and move it so that it is not right where you need to look. This may have been straight-forward for everyone else it was something I hadn’t really played around with when I had checked out Africamap before so it was useful to discover that.

In keeping with what we talked about in the last class, I applied map layers to Tanzania that would give and indication of the landscape in that region. One of the maps I applied to Tanzania was the 2006 Population by Cell map. It showed that in most of Tanzania there where 26-50 people or less per 30” cell, the exceptions being North-west Tanzania, near Lake Victoria and on the East in the city of Dar es Salaam. This tells me that these areas are economic centers. Trade has historically been brought through water channels and it makes sense that these two areas would have the largest population densities. The vast spaces in the heart of the country that had the lowest population densities also coincided with the areas that were either protected or had little or no water sources near them. One thing that I was unable to get Africamap to do was put the names of lakes on the map. When I tried to find them through google maps I wasn’t able to either. Does anyone know how to do this?