History

Tanzania is one of the sites where the first human beings are thought to have lived: archaeologists have found footprints estimated to be about 3.6 million years old. The country’s modern history begins with the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama, who landed in Tanzania in 1498. Following the Portuguese came Arab traders, who established Zanzibar as a commercial destination. Soon enough, more Europeans—Dutch, Germans, and British—began inhabiting Tanzania as well.

In 1848 a German missionary, Johannes Rebmann, became the first European to set eyes on Mount Kilimanjaro. Germany eventually colonized the mainland area of Tanzania, called Tanganyika, in 1880, and its settlers governed the area until 1919. Lake Tanganyika is close to a town called Ujiji—the site of the famed meeting between Dr. David Livingstone, an explorer, and Henry Morton Stanley, a newspaper reporter, who uttered the words (yes, you guessed it) “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

After Germany was defeated in the First World War, the British arrived and ruled until Tanganyika declared independence, in 1961. In 1964, after a popular African revolution in Zanzibar against an Omani Arab Sultanate, Tanganyika and Zanzibar joined together as the United Republic of Tanzania. The country’s official capital city is Dodoma, but the largest city and commercial center of the country is Dar es Salaam.

The Top 5: Local Advice

1. Tanzania’s official name is the United Republic of Tanzania. The country consists of the states of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, which were united in 1964. It is bordered to the north by Kenya and Uganda, to the west by Rwanda, Burundi, and Democratic Republic of Congo, to the south by Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique, and to the east by the Indian Ocean.

2. The official currency is the Tanzania shilling. Some major credit cards are accepted in large city hotels, but for all other transactions, bring local cash.

3. The official language of Tanzania are Kiswahili. Other languages include Kiunguja (the name for the Swahili language in Zanzibar), English, Arabic, and 125 tribal languages.

4. The mainland population is almost evenly divided as to religion: 30 percent of the inhabitants are Christian, 35 percent are Muslim, and about 35 percent follow local religions and practices. Zanzibar itself is almost entirely Muslim.

5. There are at least 127 known tribes in Tanzania. The Maasai tribe, possibly the best known tribe of them, generally
consists of cattle herders and lives in the northern region of the country.

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