Humanity – Homo sapiens – began evolving from our Homo ergaster hominid ancestors in East Africa around a quarter-million years ago. In all that time since, only one group of us is directly descended from those first of us, still living in East Africa, practicing the original nomadic hunter-gather lifestyle of countless millennia, their DNA unrelated to any other people on earth, their language unrelated to any other.

They are the Hadza. It is with good reason anthropologists call them “the last of the first” – for there are less than a thousand of them left as cattle-herding and farming tribes continually encroach on the hunting grounds they need to survive.

The Hadza men hunt with bow and arrows, the Hadza women gather roots, tubers, fruits and berries. They have no villages. Living together in bands of 20-30, they encamp in small shelters of boughs and leaves wherever the men have killed an animal like an eland (their favorite), warthog or some baboons, make a fire (the ancient hand-twisted stick method) and feast on it until it’s time to move and hunt again.

They wear animal skins, supplemented with clothes they trade for with nearby tribes like the Datoga. They love to sing and dance around the campfire. They smile easily and laugh freely. The only metal I saw them have was Datoga-made arrowheads and knives traded for, and a couple of pots for cooking. It’s hard to imagine a more utterly basic and simple existence. Yet they live a far happier, purposeful, and satisfied life than a great, great many of our species elsewhere.

The Hadza live around Lake Eyasi on the floor of the Great Rift Valley at the base of the Serengeti Plateau in Tanzania. It’s in the deep South Serengeti where our Wheeler-Windsor Safaris are during the late Birthing Season of February-March before the Great Migration begins. You witness the most extraordinary wildlife spectacle on earth. Can you imagine seeing 200-300,000 wildebeest stretching across the Serengeti as far as the eye can see?

No picture does that justice, so you focus on the individual, like this mommy cheetah watching her cub’s reflection in a small pool.

Here is where humankind began amidst this primordial scene. And the Hadza have been here since that very beginning. It is such a privilege and honor to be with and learn from them. It is having life-memorable experiences like this that we aspire to give those who go on safari us. Let me know if you’d like to meet “the last of the first" on our Wheeler-Windsor Serengeti Birthing Safari in 2025. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #288, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Charlatans like Erich von Daniken convinced many gullible readers of his books this “monster” was of an alien in a space suit. Real archaeologists know it’s of an ancient tribal shaman, to be found among the greatest profusion of prehistoric rock art on earth over 10,000 years old in a remote plateau of the Algerian Sahara called the Tassili n’Ajjer.

There are no roads – you must climb up here with pack mules carrying your supplies. No one lives up here, it’s uninhabited. You’ll be among spectacularly gigantic rock formations with over 300 huge natural rock arches, so geologically unique it seems unworldly. In the center of Tassili n’Ajjer known as the Tadrart is a vastly deep gorge, like a knife sliced open the mountain. Clamber down to the bottom and you will discover a forest of 2,000 year-old Saharan cypress trees – yes, a forest in the Sahara, remnants of when the Sahara was green millennia ago.

My son Jackson and I explored here in 2003. Perhaps it’s time to be here again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #28 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

It would be hard to find a more exotic restaurant than The Rock, perched on a coral outcropping off Michanwi Pingwe beach on the east coast of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean. Start off with what I found to be the world’s best (and largest) piña colada, then tuck in to marvelous fresh caught grilled lobster along with an excellent French chardonnay. Finish with coconut tiramisù and a large cup of great Tanzanian coffee. Rebel and I will always fondly remember our experience here – and so will you should you ever visit the extraordinary island of Zanzibar. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #287, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Khasab, Musendam, Enclave of Oman, October 2006. The sharp tip of Arabia, known as the Musandam Point, sticks into the Persian Gulf, separating it from the Indian Ocean. The Strait of Hormuz is only 30 miles wide from Musandam Point to the coast of Iran, and through it passes a substantial fraction of the world's crude oil.

I came here to see the Persian smugglers. Go down to the wharves in Khasab and you will see them piled high with waterproof-wrapped bales of clothes, cases of soft drinks and juice, cartons of children's toys and electronic goods, an entire shopping mall of stuff, all ready to be crammed and tied down into 20 ft. long open speedboats with powerful outboard motors capable of outrunning Iranian Navy patrols.

There are dozens, scores, of waiting speedboats. The run from Khasab harbor to coves on the Iranian coast or the Iranian island of Qeshm takes about three hours. An average night will see dozens of speedboats racing across the Strait of Hormuz smuggling goods into Iran. The smugglers couldn’t have been more friendly to me. They hate the mullahs and are proud they are helping poor people in Iran. I had a great time with them. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #169 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

Ngorongoro Crater, Serengeti, Tanzania. Ngorongoro is one of the world’s great natural wonders, created over two million years ago when the cone of a gigantic volcano collapsed in on itself. The crater floor is over 100 square miles, teeming with African wildlife that includes the densest population of lions in the world. You’re only allowed to drive on certain dirt roads to see them, but lions sometime have different ideas. Here’s a lioness we found sunning herself on the hood of a Caterpillar road-grader, completely unconcerned by our presence. We spend a few days exploring Ngorongoro to cap off our safaris in isolated roadless areas of the Serengeti. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #286, photo ©Jack Wheeler)

On the remote north side of the island of Malekula in Vanuatu, there lives a cannibal tribe called the Big Nambas. The men wear a penis gourd wrapped in pandamus fibers, and eat “man long pig,” cooked human enemies. You have to trek over mountains of thick jungle to reach them. When I was able to years ago, there were a few men who continued the practice. This gentleman is one of them. I was in no danger as they were very kind and gracious to me.

That wasn’t the case a century ago when the first explorers, Martin & Osa Johnson, reached them. Their 1918 film, “Cannibals of the South Seas,” made the Johnsons famous, and you can see it on YouTube. Today they are far more benign. It is an extraordinary experience to meet a culture of fearsome reputation and realize they are people like you and me. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #103 photo ©Jack Wheeler)