Possibly, both the Zebra and the Gnu come from that region, the zebra being descendant of Hipparion affarensis that adapted to open grasslands and to eat grass on Danakil, and the Gnu (Connochaetes) having the oldest fossils at lake Turkana. Of course it could be climate changes as well, but that an open grasslands animal that also happened to have memetic cognition and abundant access to fire as a natural resource from volcanoes just happened to exist where the savanna formed as "centers of endemism for arid forms", with a cousin species, the Paranthropus, being a grazer as well, and there being lots of recent history examples of humans downgrading the environment from complex to simple communities, turning forest into scrub or savanna and so on, to me it seems like early Homo could have been what caused savanna, rather than the other way around. I also love that idea, because it is beautiful somehow. If nothing else, just from migrating and bringing fire from the natural resource (volcanoes) along with them, and keeping the fires alive, would increase the incidence of wild fire in the region around Turkana, including Serengeti.
Possibly, both the Zebra and the Gnu come from that region, the zebra being descendant of Hipparion affarensis that adapted to open grasslands and to eat grass on Danakil, and the Gnu (Connochaetes) having the oldest fossils at lake Turkana. Of course it could be climate changes as well, but that an open grasslands animal that also happened to have memetic cognition and abundant access to fire as a natural resource from volcanoes just happened to exist where the savanna formed as "centers of endemism for arid forms", with a cousin species, the Paranthropus, being a grazer as well, and there being lots of recent history examples of humans downgrading the environment from complex to simple communities, turning forest into scrub or savanna and so on, to me it seems like early Homo could have been what caused savanna, rather than the other way around. I also love that idea, because it is beautiful somehow. If nothing else, just from migrating and bringing fire from the natural resource (volcanoes) along with them, and keeping the fires alive, would increase the incidence of wild fire in the region around Turkana, including Serengeti.