📍Gombe Stream Research Centre, Gombe Stream National Park, Kigoma Region, Tanzania
1960 – 1975“I arrived at the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika in July 1960, twenty-six years old, with no scientific degree, sent by the palaeontologist Louis Leakey who believed that an unbiased observer without academic training might see things that credentialed scientists would miss. He was right. I set up camp on the lakeshore and spent months being ignored by the chimpanzees before David Greybeard allowed me close enough to observe him using a grass stem to extract termites from a mound — the first documented instance of tool use by a non-human animal. The discovery overturned the definition of humanity. I lived at Gombe for years, sleeping in a simple tent, learning the names and personalities of chimpanzees whose social lives turned out to be far more complex than science had believed. The forest and the lake were the most beautiful place I have ever lived.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons
Sources: Goodall, J. In the Shadow of Man (1971), Houghton Mifflin; Goodall, J. Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey (1999), Warner Books; Peterson, D. Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man (2006), Houghton Mifflin