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A 30-mile-long gash in Tanzania's Serengeti Plain, Olduvai Gorge, is renowned for the remains of the earliest humans to exist. Between 1.9 and 1.2 million years ago a salt lake occupied this area. From 1.2 million to 600,000 years ago fresh water streams and small ponds appeared.
Over 400 fragments of the skull Australopithecus- Zinjanthropus Boisei were found in 1911, but it was only in 1959 when Mary Leakey uncovered a 1.75 million year old australopithecus jawbone. This was the first conclusive evidence that hominids had existed for over a million years and that they had evolved in Africa.
About 20 km (12 miles) south of Iringa is the Isimila Stone Age site. Some of the richest finds of Stone Age tools yet known may have been exposed at Isimila.
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The coast of Tanzania is protected by a large coral reef. An expansive central plateau with grasslands and mountain ranges fills the country's interior, with Mt Kilimanjaro in the north (the highest mountain in Africa) rising to 5,895 meters, or 19,340 feet. The Great Rift Valley runs through the center of the country and contains many lakes. In the north the country borders Lake Victoria and in the west Lake Tanganyika.
