The name says everything. Serengeti comes from the Maasai word Siringet — meaning “the place where the land stretches forever.” It was the Maasai who named it, and the Maasai who lived here first, long before the rest of the world had any idea this place existed.
Understanding the Serengeti history isn’t just an interesting footnote. It changes the way you see Tanzania when you’re there — and why a Serengeti safari feels different from anywhere else on earth.
Before the Park: Maasai Land
For at least two centuries before the first European explorer arrived, the Maasai grazed their cattle freely across these vast plains. They coexisted with the wildlife — lions, elephants, wildebeest — in the way that nomadic pastoralists do: moving with the land, following the grass, taking only what they needed.
The first European to document the area was the Austrian explorer Oscar Baumann, who crossed the Serengeti in 1892. He described open plains teeming with wildlife on a scale he had never seen. Word spread quickly. By the early 1900s, wealthy hunters had arrived in large numbers. Lions were shot for sport in the central Serengeti — sometimes dozens in a single expedition. Tanzania’s wildlife populations began to collapse.
From Game Reserve to Serengeti National Park
The British colonial administration declared part of the Serengeti a game reserve in 1921. It was a small area around Seronera, created specifically to stop the slaughter of lions. It was expanded in 1929.
In 1951, Tanzania gazetted the Serengeti as its first national park, incorporating what is now the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Colonial authorities gradually pushed the Maasai off their ancestral land. Tensions grew. By 1959, both sides reached a compromise: the Ngorongoro became its own conservation area, allowing the Maasai to stay and graze. The Serengeti expanded north to the Kenyan border, eventually linking up with the Masai Mara National Reserve in 1961.
It is a history with complicated layers — conservation on one side, displacement on the other.
The Film That Put the Serengeti on the Map
In 1959, German filmmaker Bernhard Grzimek and his son Michael released a documentary called Serengeti Shall Not Die. They had spent years conducting aerial surveys of the park, counting animals, mapping Great Migration routes, and making the scientific case for why this Tanzania ecosystem needed full protection.
The film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It brought Serengeti National Park to audiences across Europe and America who had never heard of it. It made the Great Migration — the annual movement of over a million wildebeest, zebra, and gazelle across the plains — a wildlife spectacle the world wanted to witness for itself. Tanzania safari bookings grew steadily from that point on.
Why the Serengeti Is Still So Extraordinary
In 1981, Serengeti National Park was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Today it covers nearly 15,000 square kilometres and protects one of the last intact large-mammal ecosystems on earth. Fossil records from nearby Olduvai Gorge show that wildebeest have been migrating across these Tanzania plains for over a million years. The routes they follow today are the same routes they have always followed.
That continuity is rare. Most of the world’s great wildlife migrations have been interrupted by roads, fences, agriculture, or development. The Serengeti’s survived because of geography, conservation, and the people who fought for it at the right moments.
When you sit on the plains and watch a column of wildebeest moving toward the horizon, you are watching something that has been happening since long before there were words to describe it.
The Great Migration itself follows a circular route across Serengeti National Park and into Kenya’s Masai Mara, driven entirely by rainfall and grass. Around 1.5 million wildebeest move together, along with hundreds of thousands of zebra and gazelle. The river crossings — where animals plunge into crocodile-filled water at the Mara River — are the moments most people picture on a Serengeti safari. But the Great Migration never really stops. It is always somewhere on the plains, in some form, at any time of year. Knowing when and where to position yourself is what separates a good itinerary from an unforgettable one.
Planning to see the Serengeti for yourself? Get in touch with our travel experts to start building your Tanzania safari itinerary.