About this timeless landscape, we can say it is where were found the first known ancestors of humans and it is the longest crack on the surface of Earth, spreading to the Middle East and South Africa. Here is the lowest point on land, framed by the highest volcanic mountains and the valley also contains some of the largest lakes in the world, connecting Europe to the Orient. Valley size is huge, has a diameter of over 100 km, and its walls reach to 1000 m from the surrounding hills. The entire length of 6750 km (1 / 5 of the circumference of the globe), rift passes through 20 countries, from Syria in the north, by Mozambique to the south. The formation of this rift in time, it was spectacular, nature showing us what happens when two tectonic plates of the Earth, the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa, are separated. Over the years, with moving plates, lakes and rivers are deep and can flow into the great rift, separating Africa from the rest of the continent. The Rift, is surrounded by mountains, plateaus, and in southern Ethiopia and it is divided into two parts, to regroup in the Lake Victoria. From this we can conclude that as the valley is slightly bent, considering that the road is not smooth and straight.
At the starting point the rift begins in Syria, where they form the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea. This meets the lowest point on Earth, 396 m below the sea level and deep in the valley there is a huge water tank where the water enters, but is not dripping. Syria 800 km, the rift enters the ocean, and the crack continues along the Gulf of Aqaba road, going inside Africa, the Danakil Depression, the Etiopia. The area is bright white due to hardened jump here, a product important, in an area where soil is infertile and makes any culture to become impossible. Rift valley or so-called "Great Lakes" with freshwater in Africa. In Tanganyika, Malawi and Victoria there are impressive beautiful lakes, where there are hundreds of fish that are no longer found in any other lake on Earth. Most are tropical fish, bright and fresh water, the family Cichlidae that are adapted perfectly to life environment. Jaw and teeth are adapted to the type of food you consume, different body shape, body being adapted predators to catch speed and the color is varied depending on the message you want to convey during the mating. These lakes have an impressive age, Tanganyika and Malawi are over two million years, Victoria is the youngest, with an age of 750,000 years.
Other African Rift Valley lakes known are Natron and Magadi. Both lakes are full of algae and resemble a giant cauldron boiling in sodium bicarbonate. Lake Natron is full of red spots on seasonal algae and therefore offers one of the strangest sights in the world. Baking soda lake that bubbles to the surface in contact with external temperature and crystallizes and forms sodium carbon plates floating icebergs on the lake also. The only birds that can feed on these two lakes are flamingos that can filter and retain water in their beaks many their main food plants.
Wonderful scenery found along the Rift line are the massive volcanoes in Africa. It's mountains Kilimanjaro and Kenya, which are the highest peaks on the continent. The third is met Ngorongoro volcano, where there is the main wildlife in Africa. Ngorongoro shelters hundreds of black rhino, zebra and wildebeest. Follow the Serengeti Plain attraction in the west, which has 100 times more animals than the Reserve Ngorongoro. The difference between the two reserves is Ngorongoro Crater are natural benefits of water and pastures throughout the year, and animals of the Serengeti, they need to migrate to other pastures in the dry season.
A very important point for the origin of humans is Olduvai Gorge, with a depth greater than 100 meters and a length of about 50 km. In this gorge there were found among the fossils and man-made objects. Also here in 1959 was discovered the first human skull, dated to 1.9-1.7 million years aged. Skull discovered then, was small and the brain was worth a third of today's man. Together with other findings made in this gorge, archaeologists and anthropologists say that this part of Africa is the birthplace of the human species.
Cradle of humanity and wildlife, in the African Rift valley, is a timeless landscape, on the move, which shows that nature is evolving and its definition by itself turn into permanent.