Meave Leakey Interview (page: 2 / 7) Pioneering Paleoanthropologist	Print Interview

Were you aware of the work of Louis and Marie Leakey before you went to Africa?

Meave Leakey: I think anyone who did a zoology course knew their work, but it wasn't something that I ever considered I would be involved in. It was just one of those things everybody knew about, especially because of the publicity in 1959. That was sort of worldwide publicity, so everyone had heard about it.

Could you tell us, briefly, what happened in 1959?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Meave Leakey: In 1959, that was the year that -- they had been working intermittently at Olduvai since -- Louis's first trip was in 1931, and they had gone there together in 1935. So they'd gone back whenever they could find the time and the money. Louis was convinced that if they kept doing that, they would finally find really good evidence of human ancestors there, because the ground at Olduvai is covered in stone tools. There are stone tools everywhere. Louis felt that if they looked long enough, they would find the maker of the tools. It was from 1931 until 1959. In 1959, Mary Leakey spotted these teeth, which turned into a fantastic skull, which they nicknamed -- well, they called Zinjanthropus and nicknamed "dear boy." You can imagine them calling it "dear boy" after all that time. So this was a skull that really set the scene in East Africa, 'cause up until that time there had been no discoveries of anything other than what they had found at Olduvai, which was just isolated teeth and skull fragments.

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

How old was that skull?

Meave Leakey: It was 1.8 million years, and at the time nobody really knew how old Olduvai was, because they didn't have a date. Olduvai, in fact, was the first site where potassium argon dating was used for an archaeology site. So that date, when it came, was a real surprise, because it was much older than people had thought. That was the setting for research in East Africa.

Your in-laws, Louis and Mary Leakey, what were they like?

Meave Leakey: They were very special people.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. My father-in-law, because he died in 1972, I didn't know him that well. I knew him fairly well. The first weekend, when I first arrived in Kenya, he took me down to Olduvai actually that weekend. For two days, he showed me his stuff and he took me to the game park. He had a lot of other visitors he had to show around, so I was able to go with them. Then he took me up to Tigoni, and then after that I didn't see that much of him. Then when I married Richard, Richard and his father weren't on terribly good terms, because I think Louis saw Richard as doing -- because they were working in a similar field and Richard was running the museum. Louis didn't like some of the things Richard was doing, 'cause Richard was trying to bring everything forward. It was a generation problem.

Mary I got to know very well.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I think one of the most fun things I ever did with Mary was when we worked together on her book that she wrote on Africa's Vanishing Art, which was about the art of Tanzania. This rock art, Louis and Mary had recorded in 1953. Mary was very artistic, and she had made all these tracings, and then they had tried to publish them and they couldn't. So instead of publishing them, she had made an exhibit in the museum and then the tracings had got left in the archaeology lab. Richard had raised money to build a new building for the pre-history. So when we moved all the archaeology from the archaeology lab to the pre-history building, I came across all these tracings. I said to Richard, "It's terrible. These things really should be published because they're so fantastic." So he found a publisher, and Mary said if I would help her then she would spend some time to do it. So we worked together on this book, and it was a really good time, because she had a fantastic command of English. It was very interesting, seeing the way she wrote, and how everything had to be absolutely exact and right. She obviously loved her time in Tanzania, doing that work. Especially because she was so artistic. So it was very special, and I really got to know her well then.

She was a great influence on me. If you did science, you did it absolutely exactly, and no corners cut, no fuzziness. She was very disciplined in her science. That was something that brushed off on me, that this is how it has to be done. If you talk to any of the field crew who worked with her, there are many stories. She absolutely couldn't stand bad work. If somebody was digging something up in what she considered to be a bad way, she'd say, "You're not digging your loshanda (garden). You're not digging up potatoes. Do this properly." She was really quite strict, even with them. She was just a fantastic character and she never minced her words on anything. She said exactly what she felt.

It sounds like an amazing experience to have worked with her.

Meave Leakey: She was a wonderful woman.

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