Tanzania's story is long and layered. Some of the oldest evidence of human ancestors anywhere on Earth was found at Olduvai Gorge, in the north, where footprints and tools millions of years old have been uncovered. For this reason the region is often called the cradle of mankind.
For centuries the coast was one of the great crossroads of the Indian Ocean. Swahili city-states traded gold, ivory and spices with Arabia, Persia and India, and the coast later became a centre of the Sultanate of Zanzibar, along with the darker history of the slave trade. That mingling of African, Arab, Persian and Indian worlds created the Swahili culture, language and architecture you still see today.
In the late nineteenth century the mainland became German East Africa, and after the First World War it passed to Britain as Tanganyika. Independence came in 1961, led by Julius Nyerere, and in 1964 Tanganyika joined with Zanzibar to form Tanzania.
Today Tanzania is a peaceful country of more than a hundred and twenty ethnic groups, held together in part by Swahili, the shared national language. Understanding a little of this history adds a great deal to a journey here.