Word: leakeys
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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That dramatic scenario occurred nearly 4 million years ago in East Africa's Great Rift Valley. But last week it was vividly recalled by Anthropologist Mary Leakey, who announced that she and her co-workers had found new and revealing traces of our early roots at the site of that ancient African spa: the actual footprints of one of those man-apes. Radioactive dating showed that the prints had been made some 3.59 million to 3.75 million years ago, a hint the creature may be the oldest-known direct ancestor...
...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...
Richard E. Leakey, Director...
...though, Harris's task is even more difficult. Harris poses a theory of cultural history paralleling Darwin's theory of natural selection--that cultural forms either adapt and survive or give way to "fitter" varieties. It is based on considerably more concrete evidence than the pioneering labors of Leakey and his father. Harris has made numerous field trips to Mozambique, India, Ecuador and Brazil in search of ancient cultures. And one can theorize with a fair degree of accuracy about what, say, the Aztecs ate and wore based on the archaelogical remains. These are far more accessible than those...
...only later that one begins to wonder. Certainly, Harris will be challenged by many of the specialists--this is the inevitable risk of generalizing about that endlessly debated human historical condition; there will always be someone, somewhere, who has evidence that contradicts one's thesis. For example, Leakey's recent book, Origins, espouses the more traditional view of warfare and materialism as the inevitable outcome of the transition fron hunting to agricultural communities...