Word: leakey
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PEOPLE OF THE LAKE by Richard E. Leakey and Roger Lewin Anchor Press/Doubleday; 298pages...
These views of our ancestors are diverting, and even, on occasion, informative. But even the speculations of more serious anthropologists and behavioral scientists, says Richard Leakey, are far from accurate. The author should know. His own guesses have the ring of authority, and his genealogy is impeccable. Indeed, if anyone doubts the power of heredity, let him examine the lineage-or the books-of the Leakey family. A generation ago, the great anthropologists Louis and Mary first explored the highlands of East Africa in search of man's origins. Today their son Richard spends much of his time...
...they could also be uncommonly generous, and before they exhausted their funds and energies, they set new standards for imaginative philanthropy. A list of their legacies includes the Guggenheim fellowships, Manhattan's Guggenheim Museum, and foundations that helped finance Robert Goddard's pioneering rocket research and the Leakey family's exploration into the origins...
...Leakey, a small, spunky woman of 64, is the widow of the famed anthropologist Louis Leakey, who died in 1972. Some four decades ago, when she and Louis were beginning their quest for the origins of man, they worked for a time in a remote area of northern Tanzania called Laetolil?the site of her latest find. But after unearthing nothing more than a few distinctly non-manlike animal remains, they moved on to Olduvai Gorge, 25 miles to the north, where their fossil discoveries were to push back man's lineage by at least a million years...
...Leakey and her team compared the footprints with some left 80,000 years ago by Neanderthal man, generally accepted as the earliest human prints. Only about 15 cm (6 in.) long, but 11˝ cm (4˝ in.) across?much wider than either those of Neanderthal or modern man?the Laetolil markings indicate a manlike primate about 1.2 meters (4 ft.) tall that probably walked with what Leakey calls "a slow, rolling gait," like a chimpanzee's. Though there were many animal tracks nearby ?including some of knuckle-walking apes?Leakey is "75% certain" that the prints were those...