The Ha tribe, descendants of the Bantu people, are said to be Gombe Stream's first settlers who arrived there from West Africa. In the early 19th century, Arabs came across the land and reported about what they suspected as the source of the Nile. This report made the British highly interested since they want to take control of all of the Nile's sources to protect their assets in Egypt.
In 1858, two British explorers, Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke, discovered Gombe Stream's Lake Tanganyika following a slave route from Zanzibar. Burton supposed Lake Tanganyika is the source, but for Speke, it is Lake Victoria, which they discovered after trudging further from Lake Tanganyika.
To resolve this issue, veteran explorer David Livingstone began to thoroughly navigate Lake Tanganyika in 1866. After Livingstone disappeared for the next five years, American journalist Henry Stanley followed his tracks and in 1871, the two met at Ujiji, where Livingstone was resting from his journeys. A monument was erected there to commemorate their meeting. Livingstone discovered that the Lualaba River is the lake's only outlet that connects it to the Nile.
Stanley returned home but Livingstone stayed on to explore the neighboring lands around the lake. A year after Livingstone's death in Zambia in 1873, Stanley went back to Africa to resolve the lakes' mystery. Both men's discoveries brought about knowledge of Gombe Stream's rich natural resources and later helped cause the "European craze" over Africa.
In 1884, the Germans laid claim over Tanzania, and part of their administration was the construction of the Dar-as-Salaam railway to Kigoma, making Kigoma Lake Tanganyika's major port. After World War I, the British took over the management of Tanganyika Territory, exploring and developing its resources. In 1943, they created the Gombe Stream Game Reserve to protect its chimpanzees and forests. The people settling there were forced to evacuate, leaving marks on the sites of their villages.
In 1960, the British scientist Jane Goodall set foot on the reserve and began studying the chimpanzees. Goodall's sponsor, paleontologist Louis Leakey, believed that the study of apes can lead to discoveries about man's own evolution. Goodall's years of pioneering work led to findings that chimpanzees share 98 percent of their genes with humans, alongside behaviors and many human attributes. Her studies became the longest-running research of any wild animal population on the planet.