Word: anthropologist
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...second son of famed paleontologists Louis and Mary Leakey, Richard first burst into global prominence in 1972 when his team in Kenya unearthed a beautifully preserved 1.9 million-year-old skull of Homo habilis, an early hominid species first discovered by his parents. Ian Tattersall, an anthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, observes that the younger Leakey has more than his share of luck. "Louis Leakey had to crawl over hot rocky outcrops for 30 years before he found anything of importance; Richard struck gold from the start." Roger Lewin, collaborator on three...
Observations of apes in the wild provide further insights. In the Tai forest in the Ivory Coast, Swiss biologist Christophe Boesch points out a flat piece of granite with two small hollows on the top. The rock has marks from heavy use for some purpose. "If an anthropologist came upon this in the forest," says Boesch, "he might think he had found a human artifact." Instead, it is used by chimpanzees for nut cracking. The chimps place a panda nut in one of the depressions and then smash it with a smaller stone. Boesch has watched a mother chimp instruct...
...best journalists too. Few possess more of it than Jaroff, who has been explaining the mysteries of the universe to TIME readers since 1966, when he became the magazine's chief science writer. Later named senior editor of the section, he oversaw projects, including the memorable cover on anthropologist Richard Leakey and a centennial tribute to Albert Einstein, that proved so successful they led to his role as founding editor of Discover magazine. Four years later, he returned to TIME in the newly created position of sciences editor...
...dangerous -- time handling a child while foraging for food. "If a woman was carrying the equivalent of a 20-lb. bowling ball in one arm and a pile of sticks in the other, it was ecologically critical to pair up with a mate to rear the young," explains anthropologist Helen Fisher, author of Anatomy of Love...
Some scientists are not startled by this contention. One of them is anthropologist Helen Fisher, a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History and the author of Anatomy of Love: The Natural History of Monogamy, Adultery and Divorce, a recent book that is making waves among scientists and the general reading public. Says Fisher: "I've never not thought that love was a very primitive, basic human emotion, as basic as fear, anger or joy. It is so evident. I guess anthropologists have just been busy doing other things...