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The African Trilogy #1
The Tree Where Man Was Born
In this classic volume, Matthiessen exquisitely combines both nature and travel writing to bring East Africa to vivid life. He skillfully portrays the daily lives of herdsmen and hunter-gatherers; the drama of the predator kills; the hundreds of exotic animals; the breathtaking landscapes; and the area's turbulent natural, political, and social histories.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
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About the author
Peter Matthiessen
143 books912 followersPeter Matthiessen is the author of more than thirty books and the only writer to win the National Book Award for both non-fiction (The Snow Leopard, in two categories, in 1979 and 1980) and fiction (Shadow Country, in 2008). A co-founder of The Paris Review and a world-renowned naturalist, explorer and activist, he died in April 2014.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 114 reviews
February 12, 2022
American naturalist Peter Matthiessen travelled throughout Africa and wrote three books, of which The Tree Where Man Was Born was the first one. Matthiessen starts his journey in today's South Sudan and travels across Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya. He explores the wildlife and documents the practices of the tribes he comes across.
I don't even know how to describe this book. This is like a long wildlife and culture documentary that is extremely vivid in its writing. It's beautiful in its descriptions and I enjoyed the nostalgic feel of the whole journey as if Matthiessen was just taking a journey back in time when nature was untouched and peopled lived in communion with nature.
Matthiessen wrote this book in the 1960s and constantly bemoans how the white people have changed the continent forever and everything, including the wildlife, will soon be completely destroyed. Happily, that did not come to pass and thanks to a slew of protectionary measures taken by local African governments, animal population has actually increased. Some problems remain, especially with respect to increasing population, the proliferation of cattle population, and loss of habitat.
Unlike Matthiessen, I don't necessarily think that tribal populations living an ancient way of life should continue without food security and modern healthcare just so white people should have somewhere to feel peaceful. This whole "white people anger about Old Africa getting destroyed" trope is extremely annoying. Old Europe got destroyed too, nobody cried. African people can evolve too and are free to do whatever the hell they want, just like others.
But the book was mostly a joy to read and I look forward to picking up the next two books as well.
I don't even know how to describe this book. This is like a long wildlife and culture documentary that is extremely vivid in its writing. It's beautiful in its descriptions and I enjoyed the nostalgic feel of the whole journey as if Matthiessen was just taking a journey back in time when nature was untouched and peopled lived in communion with nature.
Matthiessen wrote this book in the 1960s and constantly bemoans how the white people have changed the continent forever and everything, including the wildlife, will soon be completely destroyed. Happily, that did not come to pass and thanks to a slew of protectionary measures taken by local African governments, animal population has actually increased. Some problems remain, especially with respect to increasing population, the proliferation of cattle population, and loss of habitat.
Unlike Matthiessen, I don't necessarily think that tribal populations living an ancient way of life should continue without food security and modern healthcare just so white people should have somewhere to feel peaceful. This whole "white people anger about Old Africa getting destroyed" trope is extremely annoying. Old Europe got destroyed too, nobody cried. African people can evolve too and are free to do whatever the hell they want, just like others.
But the book was mostly a joy to read and I look forward to picking up the next two books as well.
April 17, 2012
I purchased this book in anticipation of a journey to Africa. This chronicle is nonfiction, but it reads with the depth and intensity of poetry. Even though this book was written about the author’s experience and impressions of Africa on a series of trips in the 1960’s his insights remain timeless. The politics of Africa are convulsive and the boundaries of countries dynamic, but much of Tanzania and Kenya lands have been preserved and remain essentially the same as when Matthiessen visited 50 years ago. His descriptions of natural occurrences like the systematic attack of wild dogs on a new born zebra made me want to beg him to stop. But, he gives life to the landscape and all the animals that dwell there with same brilliant mastery of the language and pulls the reader forward. He does speak of mans beginnings as the title suggests, “Baboons in silhouette looked like early hominids hurling wild manic howling at my head.” Even though the information about the descent of mankind is fascinating, for me it is Matthiessen’s incredible descriptive powers that give magic to a land that is often harsh and unforgiving to man and beast. Speaking about Kilimanjaro he said, “The glacier glistens. A distant snow peak scours the mind, but a snow peak in the tropics draws the heart o a fine shimmering painful point of joy.”
I will read this book again when I return from Africa to compare notes and take lessons from a truly gifted writer.
I will read this book again when I return from Africa to compare notes and take lessons from a truly gifted writer.
December 5, 2012
The Tree Where Man Was Born is a series of belle lettres essays on various aspects of natural history and anthropology in northern Tanzania (with a bit of Ethiopia, Sudan, and Kenya thrown in). It is good for its time, but it was Peter Matthiessen's blessing and curse to live in a time before Barry Lopez, who surpassed him in every possible way (blessing, because his star was not outshined, but cursed, because he was never able to enjoy the master's works).
Unlike Lopez's works, I felt that this book is best enjoyed during or after one has experienced the things Matthiessen is writing about. That's how I read it - while travelling in the Serengeti, Manyara, etc - and I definitely got more out of it than I got out of the parts I hadn't experienced myself. Matthiessen doesn't have the gift to transcribe things quite so vividly.
The parts about culture were interesting (especially regarding the Hadzabe) but there is a strangely anachronistic fascination with race and genealogy that dates the book a bit and is sometimes kind of uncomfortable. Matthiessen loves telling then-current theories about which tribes are related to which and come from where, and extrapolates this probably too much into their current way of life and personality. Lopez would cover all that but still leave with more of a sense of respect for the people who are still living there now, doing these things, living normal people lives. Not so much exoticization of the "natives." And there are some moments when Matthiessen implies they're lazy or dumb, too, which isn't helpful.
His mode of travel is certainly wonderful and admirable: he drives around the country in a seemingly self-sufficient Land Cruiser, staying with scientists and anthropologists and having them show him the things they are engaged in. But yeah, definitely worth the read.
Unlike Lopez's works, I felt that this book is best enjoyed during or after one has experienced the things Matthiessen is writing about. That's how I read it - while travelling in the Serengeti, Manyara, etc - and I definitely got more out of it than I got out of the parts I hadn't experienced myself. Matthiessen doesn't have the gift to transcribe things quite so vividly.
The parts about culture were interesting (especially regarding the Hadzabe) but there is a strangely anachronistic fascination with race and genealogy that dates the book a bit and is sometimes kind of uncomfortable. Matthiessen loves telling then-current theories about which tribes are related to which and come from where, and extrapolates this probably too much into their current way of life and personality. Lopez would cover all that but still leave with more of a sense of respect for the people who are still living there now, doing these things, living normal people lives. Not so much exoticization of the "natives." And there are some moments when Matthiessen implies they're lazy or dumb, too, which isn't helpful.
His mode of travel is certainly wonderful and admirable: he drives around the country in a seemingly self-sufficient Land Cruiser, staying with scientists and anthropologists and having them show him the things they are engaged in. But yeah, definitely worth the read.
August 7, 2015
This one's a mixed bag, with long sections describing the ethnology of the various tribes and peoples in places totally obscure to me, which I found tough to follow. Am I glad though, that I did not give up on the book after the brutally lengthy third chapter, but grudgingly gave it another shot after a few weeks hiatus. For the following few chapters on the Serengeti and Masai Mara were amongst the best nature writing I have had the pleasure of reading. The author shows why he was so highly regarded with the almost poetic descriptions of the landscape and animals of these world famous protected areas. The dispassionate account of a pack of wild dogs devouring a zebra calf as it stands under it's mother is fitting, for nature cannot be ascribed human notions like cruelty, it simply IS, without feeling, without malice. Matthiessen also gave an account of his time spent with renowned researchers like George Schaller and Iain Douglas-Hamilton, the latter being comedic in the recounting of the rash behavior and foolhardiness of their exploits together.
Overall though, there are too many chapters that I found less compelling, being travel narratives about places that are unfamiliar and therefore less captivating. I think the chapters can be read independently, since they only follow a very rough time line, as they are compiled over the author's many trips to East Africa. I suppose only a person familiar with this part of the world would find the book interesting in it's entirety.
Overall though, there are too many chapters that I found less compelling, being travel narratives about places that are unfamiliar and therefore less captivating. I think the chapters can be read independently, since they only follow a very rough time line, as they are compiled over the author's many trips to East Africa. I suppose only a person familiar with this part of the world would find the book interesting in it's entirety.
April 30, 2011
I read this when it first came out - over thirty years ago - and I'm inspired to read it again along with Matthiessen's Snow Leopard. This has absolutely gorgeous photos by Eliot Porter, of Sierra Club calendar fame.
April 17, 2014
This book had languished on my bookshelf for far too long. With the recent death of author Peter Matthiessen, I was reminded of its presence, and, somewhat shamefacedly, took it down and began to read.
I had read several of Matthiessen's other books, both fiction and nonfiction, and I had always found his writing to be quite lyrical and spellbinding. That was true of The Tree Where Man Was Born as well.
Matthiessen combines his skills as a nature writer and as a travel writer here in order to vividly bring to life the East Africa that existed in the 1960s when the adventure he is writing about took place. It is a snapshot of a time and place, people, animals, and plants even, that no longer exist or else they exist in greatly changed circumstances. The countries that he names have sometimes passed into history and become different entities with different names. Tanganyika is now Tanzania, etc.
Matthiessen travels through this vast region along the Great Rift offering us his impressions of the land and the people. He writes of breathtaking landscapes and of the herdsmen and hunter-gatherers who make their livings on this land. He gives us their daily lives in rich detail and makes us respect the dignity with which they lead those lives, so very different from our own - and yet the same in essentials. Theirs was a way of life that was dying even then, fifty years ago, and it is likely that it is mostly gone today.
Much can be said as well for the animals he describes. Some of the most harrowing passages of the book, for me at least, were his dispassionate and detailed accounts of prey animals being hunted down and sometimes torn to pieces by predators. I have no stomach for this and I admit I skipped some passages and glided swiftly over others that were too painful for me to bear. But this was very much a feature of life for those living among the great company of game animals on the plains of East Africa and experiencing the wildlife spectacle of that place, and so it was essential to his telling of the story.
The writer refers to some of the famous people of whom we have all heard who were working in the area at that time - the Adamsons of Born Free fame and that famous family of anthropologists the Leakeys. He rubbed elbows with many of these individuals in his travels and met representatives from many of the different native peoples who call the area home - people like the Maasai, the Kikuyu, various groups of Bushmen, and, most interestingly, the Hadza.
Matthiessen lived for a while among the Hadza, a group whose origins were lost in the mists of prehistory. It is from their own account of their origins that the title of the book is taken:
The great baobab tree as the cradle of mankind. As an origin myth, I have to say it makes about as much sense as any other.
Matthiessen deals lightly with the political turbulence of the region. Of course, the almost fifty years since this book was written have seen even more turbulence and more degradation of the environment and amalgamation of the distinct groups of people who populated the area in the 1960s. His elegant writing is more concerned with the natural and social history of the region and, as such, he gives us a sound basis for understanding some of the events of the intervening years.
I'm glad I finally picked this book up. Matthiessen was a master of nature writing. He will be missed, but his words live on.
I had read several of Matthiessen's other books, both fiction and nonfiction, and I had always found his writing to be quite lyrical and spellbinding. That was true of The Tree Where Man Was Born as well.
Matthiessen combines his skills as a nature writer and as a travel writer here in order to vividly bring to life the East Africa that existed in the 1960s when the adventure he is writing about took place. It is a snapshot of a time and place, people, animals, and plants even, that no longer exist or else they exist in greatly changed circumstances. The countries that he names have sometimes passed into history and become different entities with different names. Tanganyika is now Tanzania, etc.
Matthiessen travels through this vast region along the Great Rift offering us his impressions of the land and the people. He writes of breathtaking landscapes and of the herdsmen and hunter-gatherers who make their livings on this land. He gives us their daily lives in rich detail and makes us respect the dignity with which they lead those lives, so very different from our own - and yet the same in essentials. Theirs was a way of life that was dying even then, fifty years ago, and it is likely that it is mostly gone today.
Much can be said as well for the animals he describes. Some of the most harrowing passages of the book, for me at least, were his dispassionate and detailed accounts of prey animals being hunted down and sometimes torn to pieces by predators. I have no stomach for this and I admit I skipped some passages and glided swiftly over others that were too painful for me to bear. But this was very much a feature of life for those living among the great company of game animals on the plains of East Africa and experiencing the wildlife spectacle of that place, and so it was essential to his telling of the story.
The writer refers to some of the famous people of whom we have all heard who were working in the area at that time - the Adamsons of Born Free fame and that famous family of anthropologists the Leakeys. He rubbed elbows with many of these individuals in his travels and met representatives from many of the different native peoples who call the area home - people like the Maasai, the Kikuyu, various groups of Bushmen, and, most interestingly, the Hadza.
Matthiessen lived for a while among the Hadza, a group whose origins were lost in the mists of prehistory. It is from their own account of their origins that the title of the book is taken:
The Hadza themselves came into being in this way: a giant ancestor name Hohole lived at Dungiko with his wife Tsikaio, in a great hall under the rocks where Haine, who is God, the Sun, was not able to follow. Hohole was a hunter of elephants which were killed with one blow of his stick and stuck into his belt. Sometimes he walked one hundred miles and returned to the cave by evening with six elephants. One day while hunting, Hohole was bitten by a cobra in his little toe. The mighty Hohole died. Tsikaio, finding him, stayed there five days feeding on his leg, until she felt strong enough to carry the body to Masako. There she left it to be devoured by birds. Soon Tsikaio left the cave and went to live in a great baobab. After six days in the baobab, she gave birth to Konzere, and the children of Tsikaio and Konzere are the Hadza. "The Hadza," as the people say, "is us."
The great baobab tree as the cradle of mankind. As an origin myth, I have to say it makes about as much sense as any other.
Matthiessen deals lightly with the political turbulence of the region. Of course, the almost fifty years since this book was written have seen even more turbulence and more degradation of the environment and amalgamation of the distinct groups of people who populated the area in the 1960s. His elegant writing is more concerned with the natural and social history of the region and, as such, he gives us a sound basis for understanding some of the events of the intervening years.
I'm glad I finally picked this book up. Matthiessen was a master of nature writing. He will be missed, but his words live on.
May 7, 2017
There was times reading this when I thought maybe I just didn't like nature writing. I mean sure, I like nature and I like writing - a lot in both cases - but I was pretty clear I didn't like this. As the book progressed, however, it became clearer that Mathiessen's award winner simply hasn't aged well.
Like other writers in this genre, Mathiessen's book is based on his own observations, not detailed background research. His descriptions form the base of the book. Many of these involve predators hunting and feeding, and are dramatically and graphically told. His companions are mostly white men, living off or around the hunting and safari business, and this view of African wildlife, of the chain of killing, permeates the book.
Many other passages describe his encounters with African peoples. And tbh, this is the worst of the discomfort, because Matthiessen brings the same condescending tone and description to the Africans he describes as to the flora and fauna. Sure, he is sympathetic, but his passages of admiration are overflowing with noble savage-isms, like " [other than cross-hatching], the Hadza have no art besides the decoration of their persons and the simplicity of their lives."
To top it off, Matthiessen innately sees the world in gendered terms, and the combination of his 1970s sexism and racism leads to passages like: "to one side stood a dark thick-set pygmoid girl, .. she.. had a large head with prognathous jaw and large antelope eyes in thick black skin, and by western standards she was very ugly." and "Certain warm-breasted leather-skirted girls of the Mangati, carved northern faces softened by the south, are the loveliest women, black or brown or white, that I have seen in Africa.".
The intense romanticism of this writing invokes, Matthiessen's nostalgia and grief for a world he sees as drifting away, "Old Africa", populated by hordes of large mammals, and distinct hunter-gather and agricultural societies. In mourning this loss, Matthiessen firstly creates an unrealistically static view of Africa, and denies its people aspects of their humanity, capacity for survival and to carry and develop cultures through change. I have immense sympathy for Mathiessen's grief at the loss of habitat for unique and magnificent species, but this patronising and othered view of Africa was in the end, entirely the wrong approach to help preserve the environment.
Like other writers in this genre, Mathiessen's book is based on his own observations, not detailed background research. His descriptions form the base of the book. Many of these involve predators hunting and feeding, and are dramatically and graphically told. His companions are mostly white men, living off or around the hunting and safari business, and this view of African wildlife, of the chain of killing, permeates the book.
Many other passages describe his encounters with African peoples. And tbh, this is the worst of the discomfort, because Matthiessen brings the same condescending tone and description to the Africans he describes as to the flora and fauna. Sure, he is sympathetic, but his passages of admiration are overflowing with noble savage-isms, like " [other than cross-hatching], the Hadza have no art besides the decoration of their persons and the simplicity of their lives."
To top it off, Matthiessen innately sees the world in gendered terms, and the combination of his 1970s sexism and racism leads to passages like: "to one side stood a dark thick-set pygmoid girl, .. she.. had a large head with prognathous jaw and large antelope eyes in thick black skin, and by western standards she was very ugly." and "Certain warm-breasted leather-skirted girls of the Mangati, carved northern faces softened by the south, are the loveliest women, black or brown or white, that I have seen in Africa.".
The intense romanticism of this writing invokes, Matthiessen's nostalgia and grief for a world he sees as drifting away, "Old Africa", populated by hordes of large mammals, and distinct hunter-gather and agricultural societies. In mourning this loss, Matthiessen firstly creates an unrealistically static view of Africa, and denies its people aspects of their humanity, capacity for survival and to carry and develop cultures through change. I have immense sympathy for Mathiessen's grief at the loss of habitat for unique and magnificent species, but this patronising and othered view of Africa was in the end, entirely the wrong approach to help preserve the environment.
September 26, 2015
The Tree Where Man Was Born made my short list of books to hurriedly read before my trip to Africa this summer. Fortunately I actually didn't get around to starting it until well over a month following my return. And looking back, the timing was perfect. I don't know that I would've truly appreciated the depth and the passion of Matthiessen's writings in advance of my travels. In short, Peter Matthiessen recounts his multiple travels across East Africa beginning in the 1960s, but primarily those in Tanzania. The Tree… is part ethnography, part nature writing, and part adventure, all of which are sprinkled with a dash of subtle spirituality and self-discovery. Matthiessen clearly articulates that his travels in East Africa are life-changing, and perhaps the reason this book resonates with me so heavily is that I feel as though I share Matthiessen's sentiments. On a more micro-level, having already experienced the people, the places, and the awe-inspiring nature that he recounts, his prose conjured up many great memories and provided the context really needed (I believe) to fully appreciate this book.
In one of the final pages of The Tree…, Matthiessen writes: "Lying back against these ancient rocks of Africa, I am content. The great stillness in these landscapes that once made me restless seeps into me day by day, and with it the unreasonable feeling that I have found what I was searching for without ever having discovered what it was…" Couldn't have said it any better myself.
This one's not for everyone, but it's one of the greatest books I've ever picked up.
In one of the final pages of The Tree…, Matthiessen writes: "Lying back against these ancient rocks of Africa, I am content. The great stillness in these landscapes that once made me restless seeps into me day by day, and with it the unreasonable feeling that I have found what I was searching for without ever having discovered what it was…" Couldn't have said it any better myself.
This one's not for everyone, but it's one of the greatest books I've ever picked up.
April 24, 2020
I had paged through this book of my parents for years. They had a copy of this book that included Elliot Porter's THE AFRICAN EXPERIENCE photographs of East Africa, where I grew up. Many of the pictures capture the beauty of Northern Tanzania's landscapes and animals that it was enough to just page through it and remember and so I never ventured to read Peter Matthiessen's text hidden within it. As a geographer, I appreciated the two wonderful maps on this area and the wider East African setting, that showed each of the places Matthiessen traveled from Sudan all the way to southern Tanzania. Matthiessen's text captures observations of trips he had done from the early 1960s through the mid-1970s. He captures the landscape, animals, people, and the personalities with whom he explored the wild areas of these countries. I wish Elliot Porter could have included some of the pictures of these people in his photographs. The photos, Matthiessen's book, and a set of good maps make this a good book to help one explore the wild areas of East Africa.
February 25, 2021
In the early 1970's Boston Poet Robbie XII would read his latest love poem to Peter Matthiessen at weekly gatherings at Stone Soup, on Cambridge Street. Rereading this book I understand why he was so enchanted with this author, adventurer and naturalist: his writing is immediate, and sensual. The reader feels as if they are with Matthiessen, whose empathy for the "primitive" people of the East African Plain, his knowledge and love for the topography, and the animals is so clear headed and clear sighted that it is humbling. To reread this book was such an enrichment, a reawakening, and a call to all humankind that is timeless, a rediscovery of what the fabled garden of Eden just may have been.
October 12, 2020
Visceral; like traveling back into pre-history.
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October 8, 2025Source: Libby audiobook.
August 30, 2021
This book isn’t the description of a journey so much as a series of descriptive sketches concentrating on visits to some of the wildest parts of east Africa (mostly in Kenya and Tanzania). It’s not particularly clear what Peter Matthiessen was up to between these discrete experiences, and he has only a passing interest in the postcolonial Africa taking shape around him. The book has a quite different feel than Paul Theroux’s Dark Star Safari, which narrates a trip from Cairo to Cape Town. That book is filled with anecdotes of travel and encounters with people. The Tree Where Man Was Born is more invested in communicating a view of the wild Africa that was quickly disappearing. Even in 1969 Matthiessen saw that rhinos were being poached for their horn, prized in Asia for supposed aphrodisiac qualities. He was able to imagine their coming extinction, and of course today the black rhino is listed as “critically endangered.”
I can’t say that I found Matthiessen’s style engaging. He writes a dense prose, seeking to capture all the detail of experience. At times a paragraph could become something like a descriptive list of various species. I often read through a paragraph and then had to go back and re-read it. It’s not the type of book that grabs one with a sense of movement and events, rather Matthiessen seems motivated by a need to document and describe. This style works best in the central chapters devoted to the animals we most commonly associate with Africa. These descriptive sections were easy to follow because I had a set of expectations for these scenes built into me by BBC documentaries. At times Matthiessen could better those scenes because he was less squeamish about the results. When a pack of wild dogs singles out a zebra foal and takes it down right under the eyes of the helpless mother, we get the scene where the documentary camera would turn away: “Between her legs, her foal was being eaten alive, and mercifully, she did nothing. Then the foal sank down, and the dogs surged at the belly...”
More difficult to assess is Matthiessen’s interest in the ethnic and tribal history of East Africa. He introduces us to many indigenous people groups and provides what speculation he can about their movements and clashes prior to the arrival of Europeans. The book succeeds in giving a sense that old Africa wasn’t some static world outside of history. There remain traces of clashes and vast movements around the continent, the greatest of which has to be the continent-wide expansion of the Bantu peoples. The maps that come with the book provide not only place names but also locate the dominant tribal groups and use symbols to note their ethnic/linguistic connections (Bantu, Nilotic, Hamitic, Khoisan). But when sections of ethnography are mashed up against descriptions of the habits of wild animals, it’s clear that human beings have become part of the wildness that Matthiessen is seeking to document. If animals are going extinct, it’s equally true that groups of people are losing their cultural heritage. The author’s sympathies lie wholly with the Africa that is being lost, and he portrays modernization and change as leaving Africans without “heritage or hope.”
I can’t say that I found Matthiessen’s style engaging. He writes a dense prose, seeking to capture all the detail of experience. At times a paragraph could become something like a descriptive list of various species. I often read through a paragraph and then had to go back and re-read it. It’s not the type of book that grabs one with a sense of movement and events, rather Matthiessen seems motivated by a need to document and describe. This style works best in the central chapters devoted to the animals we most commonly associate with Africa. These descriptive sections were easy to follow because I had a set of expectations for these scenes built into me by BBC documentaries. At times Matthiessen could better those scenes because he was less squeamish about the results. When a pack of wild dogs singles out a zebra foal and takes it down right under the eyes of the helpless mother, we get the scene where the documentary camera would turn away: “Between her legs, her foal was being eaten alive, and mercifully, she did nothing. Then the foal sank down, and the dogs surged at the belly...”
More difficult to assess is Matthiessen’s interest in the ethnic and tribal history of East Africa. He introduces us to many indigenous people groups and provides what speculation he can about their movements and clashes prior to the arrival of Europeans. The book succeeds in giving a sense that old Africa wasn’t some static world outside of history. There remain traces of clashes and vast movements around the continent, the greatest of which has to be the continent-wide expansion of the Bantu peoples. The maps that come with the book provide not only place names but also locate the dominant tribal groups and use symbols to note their ethnic/linguistic connections (Bantu, Nilotic, Hamitic, Khoisan). But when sections of ethnography are mashed up against descriptions of the habits of wild animals, it’s clear that human beings have become part of the wildness that Matthiessen is seeking to document. If animals are going extinct, it’s equally true that groups of people are losing their cultural heritage. The author’s sympathies lie wholly with the Africa that is being lost, and he portrays modernization and change as leaving Africans without “heritage or hope.”
October 21, 2010
I bought this book before I knew who Peter Matthiessen was, namely, one of the greatest nature writers of all time. Because of the book's title, I thought the author would tie present day East Africa to a by-gone era when man was primitive and evolving and nature ruled. I read the first one-hundred fifty pages and put it down for five years before returning to it. At that time, I was lost in my passion for the life and times of early man and not so interested in anything that rhymed with 'present day'.
Then, after finishing that portion of my writing, I returned to what might be Matthiessen's greatest nature book (well, there is Snow Leopard and At Play in the Fields of the Lord. Hard to pick). When I picked it up the second time, I couldn't put it down. His descriptions of nature, the depth of understanding he voices for the people of the land, his vivid descriptions of what happens around him are like no one else. Here are a few of my favorites:
* Soon vegetation crowded the road, which was crossed at dusk by a band of bush-pig, neat-footed and burly, neck bristles erect, as if intent on punching holes right through the truck
* Soft hills inset with outcrops of elephant-colored boulders rose beyond a bright stretch of blue river
* Kamande Gatora is a contained person with the watchfulness of the near-blind; he had taken the Mau-Mau oath and been imprisoned, in the years after his mistress had gone home to Denmark, despite 'the kind deeds I was receiving from her untold and the old life we stayed with her
* Marsabit in June: great elephants and volcanoes, lark song and bright butterflies and far below, pale desert wastes that vanish in the sands.
* By morning the wind was blowing up in sandstorms. Flights of sand grouse, seeking water, hurtled back and forth over the cracking palms, and a train of camels etched a slow crack into the desert to the south.
* Inland, black boulders climb to far-off ridges that rise in turn to the Kulal Mountains, in Rendille Land.
* ...because the heat is dry and because the wind is never still for more than a few hours.
* Since gnu are ever willing to stampede, the crossing is a hazard for the calves, and one morning of early winter more than six hundred drowned.
* By late afternoon, when the predators become restless, raising their heads out of the grass to sniff the wind, those calves would already be running.
I'm only to pg. 127... Does it take your breath away, too?
Then, after finishing that portion of my writing, I returned to what might be Matthiessen's greatest nature book (well, there is Snow Leopard and At Play in the Fields of the Lord. Hard to pick). When I picked it up the second time, I couldn't put it down. His descriptions of nature, the depth of understanding he voices for the people of the land, his vivid descriptions of what happens around him are like no one else. Here are a few of my favorites:
* Soon vegetation crowded the road, which was crossed at dusk by a band of bush-pig, neat-footed and burly, neck bristles erect, as if intent on punching holes right through the truck
* Soft hills inset with outcrops of elephant-colored boulders rose beyond a bright stretch of blue river
* Kamande Gatora is a contained person with the watchfulness of the near-blind; he had taken the Mau-Mau oath and been imprisoned, in the years after his mistress had gone home to Denmark, despite 'the kind deeds I was receiving from her untold and the old life we stayed with her
* Marsabit in June: great elephants and volcanoes, lark song and bright butterflies and far below, pale desert wastes that vanish in the sands.
* By morning the wind was blowing up in sandstorms. Flights of sand grouse, seeking water, hurtled back and forth over the cracking palms, and a train of camels etched a slow crack into the desert to the south.
* Inland, black boulders climb to far-off ridges that rise in turn to the Kulal Mountains, in Rendille Land.
* ...because the heat is dry and because the wind is never still for more than a few hours.
* Since gnu are ever willing to stampede, the crossing is a hazard for the calves, and one morning of early winter more than six hundred drowned.
* By late afternoon, when the predators become restless, raising their heads out of the grass to sniff the wind, those calves would already be running.
I'm only to pg. 127... Does it take your breath away, too?
November 20, 2016
I bought this as a used coffee table book, with Matthiessen's text and Eliot Porter's photos. I found the latter to be so-so (given today's photo technology and techniques) but the former compelling.
Matthiessen writes to capture a dying Africa for whites, the natives and especially the wildlife. His first trips to East Africa are during the early 1960s independence period, a heady time in which a lot of mistakes were made that lead to the region's sorry plight today.
It's interesting to see the state of elephants 44 years ago; so many more have disappeared they may soon become essentially extinct. yet, in 1972, culling of herds was common as the land became played out and poaching continues unchecked. Ditto for rhino, plus the big cats are in big trouble now, too. The conflict between hungry, unemployed natives and wildlife is worse than ever now--with the inevitable outcome for animals.
This was the era of the last Great White Hunters and renegade scientists, whom Matthiessen interviews. Now, safaris are done by camera; one wonder what he made of THAT strange, equally exploitive (in some ways) industry 44 years later.
Yet, it is Matthiessen's invocation of the land, flora and fauna that always, always moves us, regardless of the part of the world he wrote about. Images of solitary animals and Masaai catch our breath. He skillfully weaves colonial and pre- history within those descriptions, including how wildlife has been squeezed or overpopulated, in reserves.
I read Theroux's scathing"From Capetown to Cairo" a year ago about the sorry state of East Africa now--and actually, it's gotten a lot worse since the 1999 publication of that book. It made this book all the more poignant for me, coupled with my memories of a 2003 trip to southern Africa.
The last Matthiessen I read was one of his south Florida trilogy novels. What a varied and extraordinary body of work he produced!
Matthiessen writes to capture a dying Africa for whites, the natives and especially the wildlife. His first trips to East Africa are during the early 1960s independence period, a heady time in which a lot of mistakes were made that lead to the region's sorry plight today.
It's interesting to see the state of elephants 44 years ago; so many more have disappeared they may soon become essentially extinct. yet, in 1972, culling of herds was common as the land became played out and poaching continues unchecked. Ditto for rhino, plus the big cats are in big trouble now, too. The conflict between hungry, unemployed natives and wildlife is worse than ever now--with the inevitable outcome for animals.
This was the era of the last Great White Hunters and renegade scientists, whom Matthiessen interviews. Now, safaris are done by camera; one wonder what he made of THAT strange, equally exploitive (in some ways) industry 44 years later.
Yet, it is Matthiessen's invocation of the land, flora and fauna that always, always moves us, regardless of the part of the world he wrote about. Images of solitary animals and Masaai catch our breath. He skillfully weaves colonial and pre- history within those descriptions, including how wildlife has been squeezed or overpopulated, in reserves.
I read Theroux's scathing"From Capetown to Cairo" a year ago about the sorry state of East Africa now--and actually, it's gotten a lot worse since the 1999 publication of that book. It made this book all the more poignant for me, coupled with my memories of a 2003 trip to southern Africa.
The last Matthiessen I read was one of his south Florida trilogy novels. What a varied and extraordinary body of work he produced!
December 2, 2016
While I give this book a high rating, I can't really recommend it. It is rather a heavy slog, full of difficult to pronounce names of places and people, with an emphasis on explaining how to get from one place to the next, and many of the names have been changed as African countries transitioned from colonial holdings to independent nations. That said, it is a beautifully articulated emotionally drawn mural of eastern Africa on the cusp of entering the modern world, held up alongside the ancient ways that are being lost in the process. This was written in the 60's when I was a young teenager so I have lived through the subsequent changes and it was good to be able to look back to what once was. The book is worth dipping into if for no other reason than for Matthiessen's exquisite descriptive language: "...this morning is a soft green morning when death, which never seems remote in Africa, but hangs about like something half-remembered, might come almost companionably...." and "Oblivious birdsong in the early morning wind; warm butterflies spin sunlight through the glades." and "Soon the silence is intensified by a shy birdsong, incomplete, like a child's question gone unanswered." Or "Vultures run like gimpy thieves, making off over the ground in cantering hops, half-turned, with a cringing air, as if clutching something shameful to the stiff stale feathers of their breast." His descriptions of elephants, lions, hyenas, wild dogs, zebras, giraffes, leopards, rhinos, and even the many tribes of natives he spends time with are all equally insightful and evocative, with sentences and paragraphs you will read several times before abandoning them and moving on. Oh, and if you care about where he actually was on his adventures, find a good map. The ones in the book have such tiny print you need a magnifying glass to make anything out.
July 31, 2019
2.5 stars
First published in 1972, Peter Matthiessen's "The Tree Where Man Was Born" was a National Book Award finalist in nonfiction, and predated his phenomenal half-memoir nonfiction book, "The Snow Leopard" (1978), which I read a few years ago and absolutely loved.
But I did not love "The Tree Where Man Was Born." This book is a disjointed set of essays written about Matthiessen's various trips to Africa over a decade or more. There are no timelines given for any of these different trips. They are also presented without any chronological order. Dates are mentioned haphazardly throughout the chapters, which are themselves mash-ups of various trips over various years.
While some of the essays focus on nature writing and conservation biology, a large number of pages are focused on describing different African tribes, as Matthiessen searches to learn "the heart of the African" or the "essential mind of the African" on his journeys. The entire book is written with a deeply racist narrative lens that made the chapters increasingly painful to read. This is not a long book, but the incredibly high racism and astoundingly high sexism of Matthiessen's narrative voice took a major psychological toll on me. "The Tree Where Man Was Born" is a slim volume of text, but required almost an entire year to finish.
Much of this book concerns anthropological data and evolutionary data that is extremely dated and is no longer accurate. Slogging through pages and pages of outdated historical material slowed down my reading a lot.
But much worse than that, Matthiessen's prose is dense and insular, to the point that I never felt like this book was actually trying to teach me anything about Africa. I have never visited the continent, and while I would like to visit, it's very, very expensive to travel abroad. Financially, a trip to Africa is well out of my reach, which is why I pick up books like this one.
But this book didn't welcome me into a greater understanding of Africa, or the individual countries Matthiessen visited. Place names, foreign words, and tribal terms were almost entirely presented without description or definition. The book read as Matthiessen showing off how smart he is, not like he wanted to include me on a journey. "The Tree Where Man Was Born" isn't really travel writing at all -- it's Matthiessen displaying his own erudition, and promising to find "the essential mind of the African" to present to his white North American readers. His entire racist framework is extremely painful to me.
There is no denying that Matthiessen (who died in 2014) was a great naturalist, and where this book really shines is when he is not describing the African people at all, but focused solely on nature, and describing his observations of nature as objectively as he can. Matthiessen, like many male naturalists past and present, glorifies and romanticizes the predator, and disdains the herd animal. That narrative framework provides a highly subjective schema for his writing about nature, and greatly detracted from my enjoyment of his prose. But when Matthiessen removes that subjectivity and writes more objectively, as he sometimes does in this book, the prose becomes exceptionally powerful, evocative, and haunting. There are individual passages describing the natural world in this book that are truly amazing and superb, so good that I wish I could give the entire book 5 full stars.
Alas. I feel like this book should come with a content warning of misogyny and misogynoir instead. In the first half of the book, Matthiessen expresses intense pathos and grief over watching a single diseased, dehydrated lion struggle and die, its life finally ended by a mercy kill when Matthiessen's companion takes pity on the creature and shoots it. Later, Matthiessen presents the story of an African girl who was speared in the back by two drunken tribesmen who came upon her at night. The young girl ran for help before she collapsed on the ground. Another (fully grown, adult) drunken man found the girl lying there, gasping in pain, pleading for help, and he raped her as she lay dying, getting the girl's blood all over himself. The next morning, the hungover man was found covered in the dead girl's blood, and was accused of murder. Matthiessen expresses great sorrow that this man was put into jail, and was accused of a crime he "didn't commit."
I cannot express how horrifying it is to read that a man like Matthiessen would express pity and grief for a rapist who raped an adolescent girl as she lay dying, literally f*cking her until she was dead, rather than tending to her wounds and saving her life, or calling to someone else who could render aid. The men who speared the girl were not caught, and Matthiessen is sad that another, "innocent" man is in jail for her murder.
I had to close the book at that point, and put it down for a long, long time before I could pick it up again to finish it. Matthiessen gives more humanity to the lions in this book than he gave to that adolescent girl. Writing like this crosses the line from sexism into misogyny, and specifically here, misogynoir: racist misogyny. This is rape culture on steroids, and I would never want another woman to pick up this book and read it without first warning her that it contains content like this.
When I reflect on all of the racism in this book, I deeply regret that I read it.
When I reflect on the objective naturalist prose in this book, when Matthiessen is not romanticizing the predator and writing as objectively as he can, I'm glad that I read and finished this book.
To no one's surprise, Matthiessen never "finds" the "essential heart of the African" in these essays. The one heart he could have illuminated -- his own -- is not the purpose of this book. Unlike "The Snow Leopard," these essays on Africa do not contain any memoir material. Matthiessen's personal life is never the focus of this text. And the book is much weaker for it.
I would still recommend "The Snow Leopard" to anyone who loves literary prose. But "The Tree Where Man Was Born" was highly problematic and painful for me to read. I wouldn't recommend it, outside of a history class about the evolution of nonfiction writing, or studying the transmission of racism and misogyny through narrative voice.
First published in 1972, Peter Matthiessen's "The Tree Where Man Was Born" was a National Book Award finalist in nonfiction, and predated his phenomenal half-memoir nonfiction book, "The Snow Leopard" (1978), which I read a few years ago and absolutely loved.
But I did not love "The Tree Where Man Was Born." This book is a disjointed set of essays written about Matthiessen's various trips to Africa over a decade or more. There are no timelines given for any of these different trips. They are also presented without any chronological order. Dates are mentioned haphazardly throughout the chapters, which are themselves mash-ups of various trips over various years.
While some of the essays focus on nature writing and conservation biology, a large number of pages are focused on describing different African tribes, as Matthiessen searches to learn "the heart of the African" or the "essential mind of the African" on his journeys. The entire book is written with a deeply racist narrative lens that made the chapters increasingly painful to read. This is not a long book, but the incredibly high racism and astoundingly high sexism of Matthiessen's narrative voice took a major psychological toll on me. "The Tree Where Man Was Born" is a slim volume of text, but required almost an entire year to finish.
Much of this book concerns anthropological data and evolutionary data that is extremely dated and is no longer accurate. Slogging through pages and pages of outdated historical material slowed down my reading a lot.
But much worse than that, Matthiessen's prose is dense and insular, to the point that I never felt like this book was actually trying to teach me anything about Africa. I have never visited the continent, and while I would like to visit, it's very, very expensive to travel abroad. Financially, a trip to Africa is well out of my reach, which is why I pick up books like this one.
But this book didn't welcome me into a greater understanding of Africa, or the individual countries Matthiessen visited. Place names, foreign words, and tribal terms were almost entirely presented without description or definition. The book read as Matthiessen showing off how smart he is, not like he wanted to include me on a journey. "The Tree Where Man Was Born" isn't really travel writing at all -- it's Matthiessen displaying his own erudition, and promising to find "the essential mind of the African" to present to his white North American readers. His entire racist framework is extremely painful to me.
There is no denying that Matthiessen (who died in 2014) was a great naturalist, and where this book really shines is when he is not describing the African people at all, but focused solely on nature, and describing his observations of nature as objectively as he can. Matthiessen, like many male naturalists past and present, glorifies and romanticizes the predator, and disdains the herd animal. That narrative framework provides a highly subjective schema for his writing about nature, and greatly detracted from my enjoyment of his prose. But when Matthiessen removes that subjectivity and writes more objectively, as he sometimes does in this book, the prose becomes exceptionally powerful, evocative, and haunting. There are individual passages describing the natural world in this book that are truly amazing and superb, so good that I wish I could give the entire book 5 full stars.
Alas. I feel like this book should come with a content warning of misogyny and misogynoir instead. In the first half of the book, Matthiessen expresses intense pathos and grief over watching a single diseased, dehydrated lion struggle and die, its life finally ended by a mercy kill when Matthiessen's companion takes pity on the creature and shoots it. Later, Matthiessen presents the story of an African girl who was speared in the back by two drunken tribesmen who came upon her at night. The young girl ran for help before she collapsed on the ground. Another (fully grown, adult) drunken man found the girl lying there, gasping in pain, pleading for help, and he raped her as she lay dying, getting the girl's blood all over himself. The next morning, the hungover man was found covered in the dead girl's blood, and was accused of murder. Matthiessen expresses great sorrow that this man was put into jail, and was accused of a crime he "didn't commit."
I cannot express how horrifying it is to read that a man like Matthiessen would express pity and grief for a rapist who raped an adolescent girl as she lay dying, literally f*cking her until she was dead, rather than tending to her wounds and saving her life, or calling to someone else who could render aid. The men who speared the girl were not caught, and Matthiessen is sad that another, "innocent" man is in jail for her murder.
I had to close the book at that point, and put it down for a long, long time before I could pick it up again to finish it. Matthiessen gives more humanity to the lions in this book than he gave to that adolescent girl. Writing like this crosses the line from sexism into misogyny, and specifically here, misogynoir: racist misogyny. This is rape culture on steroids, and I would never want another woman to pick up this book and read it without first warning her that it contains content like this.
When I reflect on all of the racism in this book, I deeply regret that I read it.
When I reflect on the objective naturalist prose in this book, when Matthiessen is not romanticizing the predator and writing as objectively as he can, I'm glad that I read and finished this book.
To no one's surprise, Matthiessen never "finds" the "essential heart of the African" in these essays. The one heart he could have illuminated -- his own -- is not the purpose of this book. Unlike "The Snow Leopard," these essays on Africa do not contain any memoir material. Matthiessen's personal life is never the focus of this text. And the book is much weaker for it.
I would still recommend "The Snow Leopard" to anyone who loves literary prose. But "The Tree Where Man Was Born" was highly problematic and painful for me to read. I wouldn't recommend it, outside of a history class about the evolution of nonfiction writing, or studying the transmission of racism and misogyny through narrative voice.
August 12, 2017
This is an account of the author’s travels in Africa in the 60s. He travels across East Africa, mostly by himself or with others who are doing work related to wildlife and the parks. He writes mostly about the animals, but covers the flora, the geology and the people as well. The narratives is loosely connected with little on himself or his reactions, and much of the mundane is left out and the author does not bother to stitch everything together. But, this is more than made up with the keen focus on his subjects and the details he brings forth. While what he sees is plenty and is interesting, but what I liked even more was how he does it – how deeply he applies himself to travel, how keenly observes things and tries to understand them makes it a very worthy read. I highly recommend this for anyone, more so for those who are inclined to travel to East Africa.
April 30, 2018
I read this right after finishing The Snow Leopard by the same author. The two books are an interesting contrast. This one was first and Matthiessen doesn't share as much about his feelings about things, which is the main detraction of the book. It's more like a list of tribes and fauna that are all foreign to me, than it is about his experiences.
In the Snow Leopard, the subtext is that his wife had just died. That throws him into a contemplative state about life itself. That book has much less about the tribes and animals, which is a much better balance.
This book has a good chunk about George Shaller too, who is also featured in the Snow Leopard. One of the world's best field biologists, he's a an odd bird himself that doesn't seem to like people much. It's interesting to revisit him in both books, same as reading about Doc Rickett's in Steinbeck across a couple of books.
In the Snow Leopard, the subtext is that his wife had just died. That throws him into a contemplative state about life itself. That book has much less about the tribes and animals, which is a much better balance.
This book has a good chunk about George Shaller too, who is also featured in the Snow Leopard. One of the world's best field biologists, he's a an odd bird himself that doesn't seem to like people much. It's interesting to revisit him in both books, same as reading about Doc Rickett's in Steinbeck across a couple of books.
October 25, 2020
Another bucket list book of mine, written about the soul of Eastern Africa in 1972 after several trips in the 60s. The book was written with Matthiessen's fine eye for detail (and beauty) and a curiosity that drove him to know and understand. Because of him I now know the origins of many of the tribes and their movements and entanglements. The people of Africa are far from static although it may seem so from 8,000 miles away. One of the book's enjoyable aspects was that it gave a third dimension to names like Masai and Tutsi and others that I only knew through movies or the news. He follows the predators of the Serengeti, whether animal or human, and details their existence in all three tenses. It was a marvelous book encompassing so much of a part of a the world I knew only stereotypically.
August 28, 2014
Peter Matthiesson died this year. He is one of my favorite authors. The Tree Where Man Was Born is my second favorite book of his (The Snow Leopard being the first), I read it before I went to Kenya in 1987. It may now be my second favorite book about Africa. From the 60s to the 80s Matthiesson made several trips to Tanzania to visit naturalists and conservationists. On the first he traveled from Khartoum to get there. His descriptions and attention to detail astound me. I can read his passages and smell the white hot heat of the savanna and see the silhouette of the omnipresent acacia trees. The theories of human evolution that he quotes are a bit off; we’ve learned a lot more since then. I can’t fault him with that.
July 19, 2020
This is an autobiographical account of a great writer and naturalist, Peter Matthiessen. He tells about his time in Eastern Africa which is the location on our globe where Homo sapiens first evolved. The tales of the time he spent here is interesting. One beautiful point is how he recounts the African stories of the origin of certain peoples or tribes with stories of the cultural and evolutionary histories and origins of these peoples. He is a brilliant writer and the story is great. It allows the reader a chance to visit Africa.
July 14, 2015
Absolutely beautiful. So descriptive and informative - this is the kind of travel writing I like. I love how Matthiessen was able to share his experiences in Africa without projecting his opinions on the reader, so that you get this wonderful idea of what it's like and can decide for yourself how you feel about it. There wasn't a drop of cynicism like I've found in a lot of other travel writing. I wish I'd read Out of Africa before this one though, because it's referenced a lot.
February 6, 2017
It takes less concentration to read work like this than it should. Although, a huge amount of learning is imparted, the material is handled so well that it seems to transport the reader directly on location. One of the loveliest things about the style was how easily emotion gets translated into the prose. Clearly, Africa is something the author feels within himself very deeply.
January 5, 2011
One of the best ever books I have read.
August 25, 2025
For all this fascinating information compiled in novel form readable and interesting and factual, Five stars.
It's good information about humanity's ongoing discovery or increased understanding of our origins- 315000 years ago. The history of the hunter-gatherers is important for school children, especially understanding the remaining peoples like the Hadza. Hadzabe: By The Light of a Million Fires is a good reference.
Notes:
This book was first released in 1972 so now, in 2025, with so many World changes, readers must see this as important History; it can be compared with Charles Darwin and others -a classic. I would recommend this as reading in Schools (Textbook) as the author presents this information about the origin of Earth and its peoples in readable form for aspiring Scientists/ Engineers/ Physicists/ Biologists as well as for Language students. History is attached to each subject area.
The Stone Age hunters found by the Asians are known as the Tasarians and the Bedarians and the Afro-asiatics born of these encounters raised villages on the flood plains of the Nile that would become the dynasties of Egypt.
Up to this time, Africa had known no native plants nor domesticated animals, except maybe the dog.
By 3500 B C, domestic stock appears in West Africa through traders from the Mediterranean.
The Nok culture appears well before 2000 B C.
By 300 B C, the SUDD swamp marked Southern limits of the Roman Empire as well as prevention of Egyptian splendors but the Romans still grazed their animals on what's known now as the sands of Libya.
The Nubian Desert of the Sahara was a pool of animals dying out and vanishing and infested by the desert locust and it was only to be worsened as time went by.
The author brings us up-to-date with present time (1970s in this case 53+ years ago).
References to consider: The Horizon History of Africa
The Lonely African by Colin M. Turnbull
Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
Isak Dinesen---> Baroness Karen von Blixen-Born 17 April 1885 – died 7 September 1962), born Karen Christentze Dinesen, was a Danish author, also known by the pen name Isak Dinesen.
She wrote works in Danish, French and English. She also at times used the pen names Tania Blixen, Osceola, and Pierre Andrézel.
Blixen is best known for Out of Africa, an account of her life while living in Kenya, and for one of her stories, Babette's Feast, both of which have been adapted into Academy Award-winning motion pictures.
She is also noted for her Seven Gothic Tales, particularly in Denmark.
The author includes a glossary of terms as well. I liked this.
During his travels in East Africa, Yaida Chini, Tanzania, he met with persons such as Peter Enderlein, passionate about wildlife and an attempt at understanding the ancient peoples.
The author: Peter Matthiessen was born in Manhattan, New York on May 22, 1927, died in 2014.
He served in the Navy at Pearl Harbor.
He graduated with a degree in English from Yale University in 1950.
It was around this time that he was recruited by the CIA and traveled to Paris, where he became acquainted with several young expatriate American writers.
In the postwar years the CIA covertly financed magazines and cultural programs to counter the spread of Communism. While in Paris, he helped found The Paris Review in 1953.
After returning to the United States, he worked as a commercial fisherman and the captain of a charter fishing boat. His first novel, Race Rock, was published in 1954.
His other fiction works include Partisans, Raditzer, Far Tortuga, and In Paradise. His novel, Shadow Country, won a National Book Award. His novel, At Play in the Fields of the Lord, was made into a movie. He started writing nonfiction after divorcing his first wife. An assignment for Sports Illustrated to report on American endangered species led to the book Wildlife in America, which was published in 1959. His travels took him to Asia, Australia, South America, Africa, New Guinea, the Florida swamps, and beneath the ocean.
These travels led to articles in The New Yorker as well as numerous nonfiction books including The Cloud Forest: A Chronicle of the South American Wilderness, Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons of Stone Age New Guinea, Blue Meridian: The Search for the Great White Shark, The Tree Where Man Was Born, and Men's Lives.
The Snow Leopard won the 1979 National Book Award for nonfiction. He died from leukemia on April 5, 2014 at the age of 86.
It's good information about humanity's ongoing discovery or increased understanding of our origins- 315000 years ago. The history of the hunter-gatherers is important for school children, especially understanding the remaining peoples like the Hadza. Hadzabe: By The Light of a Million Fires is a good reference.
Notes:
This book was first released in 1972 so now, in 2025, with so many World changes, readers must see this as important History; it can be compared with Charles Darwin and others -a classic. I would recommend this as reading in Schools (Textbook) as the author presents this information about the origin of Earth and its peoples in readable form for aspiring Scientists/ Engineers/ Physicists/ Biologists as well as for Language students. History is attached to each subject area.
The Stone Age hunters found by the Asians are known as the Tasarians and the Bedarians and the Afro-asiatics born of these encounters raised villages on the flood plains of the Nile that would become the dynasties of Egypt.
Up to this time, Africa had known no native plants nor domesticated animals, except maybe the dog.
By 3500 B C, domestic stock appears in West Africa through traders from the Mediterranean.
The Nok culture appears well before 2000 B C.
By 300 B C, the SUDD swamp marked Southern limits of the Roman Empire as well as prevention of Egyptian splendors but the Romans still grazed their animals on what's known now as the sands of Libya.
The Nubian Desert of the Sahara was a pool of animals dying out and vanishing and infested by the desert locust and it was only to be worsened as time went by.
The author brings us up-to-date with present time (1970s in this case 53+ years ago).
References to consider: The Horizon History of Africa
The Lonely African by Colin M. Turnbull
Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
Isak Dinesen---> Baroness Karen von Blixen-Born 17 April 1885 – died 7 September 1962), born Karen Christentze Dinesen, was a Danish author, also known by the pen name Isak Dinesen.
She wrote works in Danish, French and English. She also at times used the pen names Tania Blixen, Osceola, and Pierre Andrézel.
Blixen is best known for Out of Africa, an account of her life while living in Kenya, and for one of her stories, Babette's Feast, both of which have been adapted into Academy Award-winning motion pictures.
She is also noted for her Seven Gothic Tales, particularly in Denmark.
The author includes a glossary of terms as well. I liked this.
During his travels in East Africa, Yaida Chini, Tanzania, he met with persons such as Peter Enderlein, passionate about wildlife and an attempt at understanding the ancient peoples.
The author: Peter Matthiessen was born in Manhattan, New York on May 22, 1927, died in 2014.
He served in the Navy at Pearl Harbor.
He graduated with a degree in English from Yale University in 1950.
It was around this time that he was recruited by the CIA and traveled to Paris, where he became acquainted with several young expatriate American writers.
In the postwar years the CIA covertly financed magazines and cultural programs to counter the spread of Communism. While in Paris, he helped found The Paris Review in 1953.
After returning to the United States, he worked as a commercial fisherman and the captain of a charter fishing boat. His first novel, Race Rock, was published in 1954.
His other fiction works include Partisans, Raditzer, Far Tortuga, and In Paradise. His novel, Shadow Country, won a National Book Award. His novel, At Play in the Fields of the Lord, was made into a movie. He started writing nonfiction after divorcing his first wife. An assignment for Sports Illustrated to report on American endangered species led to the book Wildlife in America, which was published in 1959. His travels took him to Asia, Australia, South America, Africa, New Guinea, the Florida swamps, and beneath the ocean.
These travels led to articles in The New Yorker as well as numerous nonfiction books including The Cloud Forest: A Chronicle of the South American Wilderness, Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons of Stone Age New Guinea, Blue Meridian: The Search for the Great White Shark, The Tree Where Man Was Born, and Men's Lives.
The Snow Leopard won the 1979 National Book Award for nonfiction. He died from leukemia on April 5, 2014 at the age of 86.
June 15, 2024
A book that grows more powerful by the page, written with understanding, experience, and empathy. With more than a few moving passages:
"Giga, holding his ornamented grandchild to his cheek, rolls his eyes and croons, a love all the more affecting for the great ugliness that, as one comes to perceive this man, turns to great beauty."
"Like myself, Peter has often been ashamed in front of Africans by the amount of equipment that his white friends required. Yet Africans admire wealth, and anyway, they do not make judgments in such matters, but accept a different culture as it is. The people at Gidabembe, who still trust, are neither subservient nor rude. Here was the gentleness, the loving attention to the moment, that is vanishing in East Africa, as it has vanished in the western world."
"The Hadza have no chiefs, no villages, no political system; their independence is their very breath. Giga speaks of an old man who wandered off last year and was thought lost. Three months later he turned up again, well rested from the stress of human company."
"On certain rare mornings at Momela, Mt. Kilimanjaro rises high and clear out of clouds that dissolve around it. From the north, in Kenya, it looks celestial, benign; from Momela, it is dark and looming. Such massifs as the Ruwenzoris on the Congo-Uganda border and the High Semien of Ethiopia lack the splendor of Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya, which stand all alone: at 19,340 feet, Kilimanjaro is the highest solitary mountain in the world. Mt. Kenya is a shard of rock thrust upward from the earth, but Kilima Njaro, the White Mountain, has ascended into the sky, a place of religious resonance for tribes all around its horizons. The glacier glistens. A distant snow peak scours the mind, but a snow peak in the tropics draws the heart to a fine shimmering painful point of joy."
"After serving sentences that were difficult for them to understand, some hunters became safari gun bearers and trackers, or scouts for the Kenya Game Department, and great credit for finding them places must go to Bill Woodley, who would later do the same for ex-Mau-Mau in the Aberdares. A few reverted to poaching, and most have joined the many other Africans whose old way of life has vanished, leaving them without heritage or hope."
"Of all African animals, the elephant is the most difficult for man to live with, yet its passing—if this must come—seems the most tragic of all. I can watch elephants (and elephants alone) for hours at a time, for sooner or later the elephant will do something very strange such as mow grass with its toenails or draw the tusks from the rotted carcass of another elephant and carry them off into the bush. There is mystery behind that masked gray visage, an ancient life force, delicate and mighty, awesome and enchanted, commanding the silence ordinarily reserved for mountain peaks, great fires, and the sea. I remember a remark made by a girl about her father, a businessman of narrow sensibilities who, casting about for a means of self-gratification, traveled to Africa and slew an elephant. Standing there in his new hunting togs in a vast and hostile silence, staring at the huge dead bleeding thing that moments before had borne such life, he was struck for the first time in his headlong passage through his days by his own irrelevance. “Even he,” his daughter said, “knew he’d done something stupid.”"
"Giga, holding his ornamented grandchild to his cheek, rolls his eyes and croons, a love all the more affecting for the great ugliness that, as one comes to perceive this man, turns to great beauty."
"Like myself, Peter has often been ashamed in front of Africans by the amount of equipment that his white friends required. Yet Africans admire wealth, and anyway, they do not make judgments in such matters, but accept a different culture as it is. The people at Gidabembe, who still trust, are neither subservient nor rude. Here was the gentleness, the loving attention to the moment, that is vanishing in East Africa, as it has vanished in the western world."
"The Hadza have no chiefs, no villages, no political system; their independence is their very breath. Giga speaks of an old man who wandered off last year and was thought lost. Three months later he turned up again, well rested from the stress of human company."
"On certain rare mornings at Momela, Mt. Kilimanjaro rises high and clear out of clouds that dissolve around it. From the north, in Kenya, it looks celestial, benign; from Momela, it is dark and looming. Such massifs as the Ruwenzoris on the Congo-Uganda border and the High Semien of Ethiopia lack the splendor of Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya, which stand all alone: at 19,340 feet, Kilimanjaro is the highest solitary mountain in the world. Mt. Kenya is a shard of rock thrust upward from the earth, but Kilima Njaro, the White Mountain, has ascended into the sky, a place of religious resonance for tribes all around its horizons. The glacier glistens. A distant snow peak scours the mind, but a snow peak in the tropics draws the heart to a fine shimmering painful point of joy."
"After serving sentences that were difficult for them to understand, some hunters became safari gun bearers and trackers, or scouts for the Kenya Game Department, and great credit for finding them places must go to Bill Woodley, who would later do the same for ex-Mau-Mau in the Aberdares. A few reverted to poaching, and most have joined the many other Africans whose old way of life has vanished, leaving them without heritage or hope."
"Of all African animals, the elephant is the most difficult for man to live with, yet its passing—if this must come—seems the most tragic of all. I can watch elephants (and elephants alone) for hours at a time, for sooner or later the elephant will do something very strange such as mow grass with its toenails or draw the tusks from the rotted carcass of another elephant and carry them off into the bush. There is mystery behind that masked gray visage, an ancient life force, delicate and mighty, awesome and enchanted, commanding the silence ordinarily reserved for mountain peaks, great fires, and the sea. I remember a remark made by a girl about her father, a businessman of narrow sensibilities who, casting about for a means of self-gratification, traveled to Africa and slew an elephant. Standing there in his new hunting togs in a vast and hostile silence, staring at the huge dead bleeding thing that moments before had borne such life, he was struck for the first time in his headlong passage through his days by his own irrelevance. “Even he,” his daughter said, “knew he’d done something stupid.”"
July 10, 2025
This isn't my review, but a very intelligent reviewer named Adam.
The Tree Where Man Was Born is a series of belle lettres essays on various aspects of natural history and anthropology in northern Tanzania (with a bit of Ethiopia, Sudan, and Kenya thrown in). It is good for its time, but it was Peter Matthiessen's blessing and curse to live in a time before Barry Lopez, who surpassed him in every possible way (blessing, because his star was not outshined, but cursed, because he was never able to enjoy the master's works).
Unlike Lopez's works, I felt that this book is best enjoyed during or after one has experienced the things Matthiessen is writing about. That's how I read it - while travelling in the Serengeti, Manyara, etc - and I definitely got more out of it than I got out of the parts I hadn't experienced myself. Matthiessen doesn't have the gift to transcribe things quite so vividly.
The parts about culture were interesting (especially regarding the Hadzabe) but there is a strangely anachronistic fascination with race and genealogy that dates the book a bit and is sometimes kind of uncomfortable. Matthiessen loves telling then-current theories about which tribes are related to which and come from where, and extrapolates this probably too much into their current way of life and personality. Lopez would cover all that but still leave with more of a sense of respect for the people who are still living there now, doing these things, living normal people lives. Not so much exoticization of the "natives." And there are some moments when Matthiessen implies they're lazy or dumb, too, which isn't helpful.
His mode of travel is certainly wonderful and admirable: he drives around the country in a seemingly self-sufficient Land Cruiser, staying with scientists and anthropologists and having them show him the things they are engaged in. But yeah, definitely worth the read.
The Tree Where Man Was Born is a series of belle lettres essays on various aspects of natural history and anthropology in northern Tanzania (with a bit of Ethiopia, Sudan, and Kenya thrown in). It is good for its time, but it was Peter Matthiessen's blessing and curse to live in a time before Barry Lopez, who surpassed him in every possible way (blessing, because his star was not outshined, but cursed, because he was never able to enjoy the master's works).
Unlike Lopez's works, I felt that this book is best enjoyed during or after one has experienced the things Matthiessen is writing about. That's how I read it - while travelling in the Serengeti, Manyara, etc - and I definitely got more out of it than I got out of the parts I hadn't experienced myself. Matthiessen doesn't have the gift to transcribe things quite so vividly.
The parts about culture were interesting (especially regarding the Hadzabe) but there is a strangely anachronistic fascination with race and genealogy that dates the book a bit and is sometimes kind of uncomfortable. Matthiessen loves telling then-current theories about which tribes are related to which and come from where, and extrapolates this probably too much into their current way of life and personality. Lopez would cover all that but still leave with more of a sense of respect for the people who are still living there now, doing these things, living normal people lives. Not so much exoticization of the "natives." And there are some moments when Matthiessen implies they're lazy or dumb, too, which isn't helpful.
His mode of travel is certainly wonderful and admirable: he drives around the country in a seemingly self-sufficient Land Cruiser, staying with scientists and anthropologists and having them show him the things they are engaged in. But yeah, definitely worth the read.
June 30, 2021
Although Mr. Matthiessen's writing is far above average, he loses points for other factors.
The book is about his various wanderings and observations around African countrysides some years back and it contained far too many references to...
1. Places most of his readers will be completely unfamiliar with. He practically gives road maps over and over, filled with meaningless references.
2. Historical references related particularly to the origins and movements of various peoples, most all of which are likewise unfamiliar to readers. Additionally he throws in unfamiliar language and physical feature connections between groups. This is probably more interesting to specialist academic readers than the general public.
3. There's a reference to a visit to Leakey's archaelogical dig that didn't come off and is never revisited. Why include a failed trip? That wasn't the only planned trip that failed in this book either.
He's really good at colorfully describing atmospheric conditions and landscapes and animals and people, but the disconnecting details mentioned previously drag that down.
His stories were interesting, but also spaced far apart and couldn't carry the rest on their backs.
Definitely average.
The book is about his various wanderings and observations around African countrysides some years back and it contained far too many references to...
1. Places most of his readers will be completely unfamiliar with. He practically gives road maps over and over, filled with meaningless references.
2. Historical references related particularly to the origins and movements of various peoples, most all of which are likewise unfamiliar to readers. Additionally he throws in unfamiliar language and physical feature connections between groups. This is probably more interesting to specialist academic readers than the general public.
3. There's a reference to a visit to Leakey's archaelogical dig that didn't come off and is never revisited. Why include a failed trip? That wasn't the only planned trip that failed in this book either.
He's really good at colorfully describing atmospheric conditions and landscapes and animals and people, but the disconnecting details mentioned previously drag that down.
His stories were interesting, but also spaced far apart and couldn't carry the rest on their backs.
Definitely average.
March 20, 2021
Written half a century ago, Matthiessen's rendering of the wild Africa he visited intermittently over a decade (primarily in Kenya and what is now Tanzania) is both beautiful and profoundly troubling: he was witnessing, as an outsider, the impending destruction of the native peoples and the wild lands and animals that had sustained them for millennia, and he recognized that impending end at the time.
His knowledge of the flora and fauna is immense, and his description of the visual and aural scenery is, as always in his writing, magnificently vivid. His effort to understand and appreciate both the rapidly changing (and disappearing) nature, tribal people, and customs, as well as the white explorers and ecologists, mark Matthiessen as both an artist and a thoughtful ethnographer.
I have loved reading Matthiessen's work; I will pursue the rest of The African Trilogy next. In the meantime, this wonderful review of this first of the trilogy is worth reading as well:
http://boycerichardson.blogspot.com/2...
His knowledge of the flora and fauna is immense, and his description of the visual and aural scenery is, as always in his writing, magnificently vivid. His effort to understand and appreciate both the rapidly changing (and disappearing) nature, tribal people, and customs, as well as the white explorers and ecologists, mark Matthiessen as both an artist and a thoughtful ethnographer.
I have loved reading Matthiessen's work; I will pursue the rest of The African Trilogy next. In the meantime, this wonderful review of this first of the trilogy is worth reading as well:
http://boycerichardson.blogspot.com/2...
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