Posted
on February 6, 2014
She
discovered ancient hominid and other ape skulls. She dug up tools created by humanity's ancient ancestors. She discovered hominid footprints that
were made more than 3.6 million years ago. She discovered 15 new
species of animals and one new genus.
Mary
Leakey, born on this date in 1903, in London, England, was a
paleoanthropologist. That means she studied early humans and human
ancestors.
She
married another paleoanthropologist, Louis Leakey, and she helped train her sons in the science as well.
The Leakeys have made many
contributions to our knowledge of human evolution. One of their most
famous dig sites was at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, Africa. Mary
Leakey also made major discoveries at another Tanzanian site called
Laetoli.
- Find out more about early humans by checking out some of the kids' resources Mr. Donn has gathered here.
I
was interested in Mary Leakey's early life. What was her childhood
like, that she ended up going into such an adventurous field?
I
discovered that her father Erskine Nicol was a painter, and the
family moved from place to place as he painted watercolor landscapes.
He was also an enthusiast about Ancient Egypt, and the family lived
in Egypt for a while. Mary loved to go on long exploratory walks with
her father wherever they lived. You can see that she had an
adventurous childhood!
Her
mother's family, also, was far from boring! Mary's mother, Cecilia
Frere, had relatives that included an antiquarian and an
archeologist. Also, during the 1800s the Frere family had been active in trying to end
slavery in the British colonial empire. They had
even established communities for freed slaves, including Freretown,
Kenya (Africa); Freretown, South Africa; and Freretown, India.
Now,
this is impressive: In 1925, the family was living in France, in Les
Eyzies, just when Elie Peyrony was excavating one of the caves in
which archeologists had discovered signs of prehistoric humans.
Although Mary was just 12 years old, she got permission to go through
Peyrony's dump, and she became hooked on prehistory! She made a
collection of points, scrapers, and blades that she found in the
dump, and she even developed a system of classification!
If
you know anything about modern archeology, you might be wondering why
Peyrony would've missed points, scrapers, and blades in his dig! Why
on earth would such valuable stuff be in his dump?
You see, back
in the early 1900s, archeology was still in an early stage, and
excavations were not made systematically and scientifically. It was
more like a treasure hunt—think Indiana Jones!—than like the
patient and painstaking uncovering of evidence that it is
today. These days, shards of pottery and bones from ancient trash
pits are photographed, measured, and catalogued as carefully as are
golden goblets and entire skulls!
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on this date:
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ahead:
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