MOUNT KILIMANJARO HISTORY, TRIBES AND GEOLOGY

1. History Of Mount Kilimanjaro

Ice, too hard and brilliant to be melted by the sun, thawed against sun-warmed and thermally heated rock, ran down black basaltic lava rocks in white zebra stripes of ash-derived salts. Life-giving streams fertilized and watered lower mountain slopes, providing an ideal environment for early man to develop from nomadic hunter-gatherer to settled farmer, building villages and developing a cohesive society. Apart from a few stone bowls, you will find no traces of these early settlements on trek tours of Kilimanjaro.

The mountain was a landmark for Arab and Chinese traders. The earliest historical references to the mountain (described as a snow island in the sky), appear in the writings of Ptolemy, a Graeco-Roman polymath, or a man of many talents -- historian, writer, astronomer, geographer and mathematician who lived in the first century AD. Chinese scholars do not refer to it until around seven centuries ago.

In 1849, missionary Johann Rebmann, published an account that was not believed. Kilimanjaro became part of a German Protectorate in 1885. Hans Meyer was the first European to climb Mount Kilimanjaro to reach the summit of Kibo in October of 1889. At this point, it was actually described as “The highest mountain in Germany”! The German colonial government made Mount Kilimanjaro a game reserve together with its surrounding forests until it was allocated to the British as a Protectorate under the League of Nations until Tanzanian Independence in 1961.

In 1973, Kilimanjaro National Park included 1668 square kilometers of the mountain above 800 meters high, within a forest reserve above the foothills. In 1987, this was declared a United Nations World Heritage Site and expanded in 2005 to include the entire tropical forest where certain species found on a Mt. Kilimanjaro climbing fieldtrip occur nowhere else on earth. The lower slopes are still farmed by the indigenous Chagga people.

2. The Tribal People of Kilimanjaro

Since 400 years ago, the Wachagga people settled on Kilimanjaro, displacing or absorbing earlier tribes. Amongst these were said to be the aboriginal Wakonyingo: Bantu dwarf pygmies of mythical stature, credited variously with tails, large heads, magical powers and the ability to live close to heaven at the top of mountains. The Umbo tribe, driven out themselves from Usambara Mountains, may have been responsible for the disappearance of the Wakonyingo.

The Wangassa claimed to have lived forever on the mountain and to be separate from the Maasai people whom they resembled at that time. After a long history of war and treachery, the various tribes and clans became united under one chief as the Chagga people. The Chagga now form one of Tanzania’s largest, richest, best refined and most powerful ethnic groups, possibly because of the fertility of their homelands combined with their contact with early German colonialists and missionaries whose travel in Africa provided the Chagga with education and opportunities to embrace the Western culture.

However, this destroyed much of the Chagga way of life, which included veneration of the mountain god, Ruwa, and their own ancestors. Medicine men practiced animal and even human sacrifice with elaborate rituals for purifying people who had been the target of curses or malicious magic. They practiced circumcision, puberty rituals, elaborate levels of burial rites depending on the status of the deceased, and brides were coached to put on appropriate weight before carrying them to their husbands.

The staple crops were bananas and sweet potatoes, given to them by Ruwa. A banana grove is a sacred place and the family burial ground. Their homes, simple beehive huts, can still be seen today on a Kilimanjaro tour in East Africa. Their wealth is now based on banana and coffee plantations, but they no longer accept barter payment in beads and cloth.

3. Geology Of Kilimanjaro

Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa, is a unique Tanzanian highland vacation destination: a stand-alone pinnacle which creates its own climate in zones of distinct character, from fluted glacial columns and cathedrals of ice on the summit, through alpine desert, heath and moorland, to rich, lush tropical forests and fertile farmland on gentle slopes above vast grass steppes. It is the perfect place for a climbing safari-quest in Africa for the common man.

The Shining Mountain, to give its deciphered name in Kiswahili, was created in a cataclysmic dance of fire and ice, starting with the formation of the Great African Rift Valley in the Pleistocene age some 35 million years ago. The birth of Kilimanjaro started three-quarters of a million years ago. Three cones erupted. Shira was formed first, 500,000 years ago, followed by Mawenzi, both now extinct, and collapsed caldera. Supported on their foundation, Kibo continued to rise to become the famous ice-capped peak.



This strato-volcano formed from layers of ash and lava continued to evolve over hundreds of thousands of years as the volcano reared and slumped while ice retreated and advanced. Its last major eruption was over 150,000 years ago at the bare minimum, but you can see sulphur-vapour fumaroles and numbers of small, dormant mini or parasitic volcanic cones on trekking tours on Mt. Kilimanjaro. The last upsurge, 200 years ago, left the spectacular Ash Pit in the Reusch Crater.

Ancient glaciers on Kilimanjaro provide an ice-core record of climate change over almost 12,000 years, including periods of extreme drought and fluctuating levels of water and ice. Once again, the ice is in retreat. Within the next decades, people climbing Mount Kilimanjaro may find the summit as bare and black as it was for 20,000 years before the Holocene Period of the last 10,000 years. Soon, the Shining Mountain may be no more than a memory of climb holidays in Africa. Take the challenge on today with planning your trek with Uhuru Trails by AfricanMecca.

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