NDUTU
LOCATION
Lake-margin sediments on the western side of Lake
Ndutu, a seasonal soda lake at the western end of the
Main Gorge at Olduvai, northern Tanzania.
DISCOVERY
Excavations of A. Mturi, September/October, 1973.MATERIAL
Partial adult cranium.
DATING AND STRATIGRAPHIC CONTEXT
The cranium was excavated from lakeside flats
exposed during the dry season by falling lake levels.
These flats are covered by a surface litter of stone
artifacts, whose provenance the excavations were
undertaken to determine (Mturi, 1976). Two ar-
chaeological horizons were discovered in a sandy
clay unit that is overlain to the north by a reworked
tuff that may correspond to the Norkilili Member of
the Upper Masek Beds (Bed IVB) at the nearby
Olduvai Gorge (see Clarke, 1990). The cranium was
found in the upper archaeological horizon. If the
Norkilili and Lake Ndutu tuffs both mark the same
volcanic event, the cranium is probably in the order
of 400 Ka old (Leakey and Hay, 1982). However, it
is not at present possible entirely to exclude the
possibility that the Lake Ndutu tuff derives from
the same volcanic episode that produced the tuffs of
the Nudutu Beds that overlie the Masek Beds at
Olduvai. Thus the cranium might also be as young
as about 200 Ka, although archaeological considera-
tions favor the earlier date (see below).ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXT
The artifacts originally found in association with the
cranium were rather indeterminate (Mturi, 1976).
However, a drop in lake level in 1982 enabled Mturi to
recover handaxes at the site that were almost certainly
from the same horizon as the cranium. Mturi (quoted
by Clarke, 1990) considers these implements to belong
to the same tradition as those from the Masek Beds,
and thus to date from about 500-300 Ka ago.PREVIOUS DESCRIPTIONS AND ANALYSES
Reconstruction and initial description of the Ndutu
cranium were undertaken by Clarke (1976), who
emphasized similarities with Zhoukoudian Homo erec-
tus. In a more exhaustive later account Clarke (1990)
revised his opinion to place the Ndutu hominid as an
archaic representative of Homo sapiens, descended
from forms (such as OH 9 and SK 847) that he had
previously regarded as “African Homo erectus” but for
which he now preferred the appellation Homo Zeakeyi.
Clarke saw an African lineage as exclusive progenitor
of Homo sapiens, and east Asian Homo erectus as a side-
branch in human evolution. Rightmire (1990) has also
emphasized the ways in which Ndutu differs from
Homo erectus (which he defines more broadly than
Clarke does), and seems to hint at affinities with188