The Maasai Community of the Ngorongoro. For many years, a succession of cattle keepers shifted to Ngorongoro area, resided there for a while, but sometimes other tribes forced them out. Around 200 years back, the Maasai reached and have ever since taken control over the area in substantial numbers, with their traditional way of life letting them to stay in peace with the wildlife and environment. These Maasai forced out the Datoga, Nilo-hamitic speaking pastoralists, who settled in this area over 300 years back and they therefore left the Ngorongoro and settled in the Lake Eyasi basin and beyond.

About 42,000 Maasai pastoralists are believed to be staying in the area near the Ngorongoro together with their animals that include; goats, cattle, sheep as well as donkeys. While these people move into the adjacent woodlands and mountain slopes during the dry season, the rainy season makes them move out on to the open plains.

If not for living or cultivation purposes but rather in quest for water and pasture, the Maasai are let to take their animals into the Ngorongoro Crater. Otherwise, they have a right to move freely else where around the Ngorongoro area. Usually, guests stop at the Maasai cultural homestead, one on the road to Serengeti national Park and another close to the Serengeti Sopa Lodge at the Irkeepusi Village.

Maintaining the historic balance of people and nature is a way, which has not been possible in parts of Africa, is what Ngorongoro aims at. The rich biodiversity and ecology of the Serengeti plains and Ngorongoro Highlands, the major palaeontological and archaeological sites and the important water catchment areas are the ones at stake.

For this therefore, man and wildlife need to live in harmony without harming or destroying each other’s habitats. I other words, they need to stay together-they each other.

Tourism is paramount in generating revenue for the area, has been encouraged and developed, with a respect for culture, and without damaging the environment.

Ngorongoro offers a chance to acquire some knowledge about the African contribution to global culture and to understand its values in today’s world, educational visits are encouraged. For over three million years now, man and his ancestors have lived in the Ngorongoro ecosystem yet evidence of a regional hunter-gatherer culture dates back 17,000 years and it is clear that various tribes have shifted in and out of the area, just as they have done in relatively recent times.