A 235 metre single drop on the Zambia and Tanzania border, one of the tallest uninterrupted falls in Africa, dropping into a gorge 5 km long and 300 metres deep that opens into the Lake Tanganyika rift. The water is the reason people come and the ground is the reason it matters: occupation here spans over 447,000 years, and J.D. Clark first dug it in 1953. In 2023 researchers announced something extraordinary from these deposits, two worked wooden beams, notched and shaped so they interlock, with burning used in the working, dated by luminescence to about 476,000 years old. That is the oldest wooden structure known, and it predates our own species; the likely builders were Homo heidelbergensis. It has been on the UNESCO tentative list since 2016.
Northern Province, Zambia
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