Brief History of Geological Research on the Kenya Rift Lakes

Abstract

The Kenya Rift Valley was occupied by Africans for millennia before Arab traders visited the region. Europeans visited during the nineteenth century with Turkana the last lake reached in 1888. Geological and limnological exploration began in the late nineteenth century. Multidisciplinary scientific expeditions followed, including the 1927–28 limnology survey of Lake Victoria, the Percy Sladen Expedition of 1929, and the larger Cambridge Expedition to the East African lakes of (1930–31). The Cambridge Expedition, the Mission Scientifique de l’Omo (1932–33), and the Lake Rudolf Rift Valley Expedition (1934) included a greater focus on geology. Systematic research developed when institutes such as the Department of Mines and Geology in Kenya (1932) and the East African Fisheries Research Organisation (1947) were formed. Much debate was devoted to the ‘pluvial hypothesis’ in the 1940s to 1960s as a framework for archaeological studies, but this was later discredited. Research on palaeolakes was advanced through work by the East African Geological Research Unit in the 1960s and 1970s. Early work on potential petroleum and geothermal resources began in the 1950s. Holocene palaeoclimatic research began in the 1960s using outcrops, cores and varied proxies with longer cores recently generating Plio-Pleistocene records spanning hundreds of thousands of years.