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

What challenges do you look forward to? What other mysteries do you hope to pursue in the future?

Meave Leakey: Right now we're working at the more recent end. We've gone up to the Homo erectus times. We're now working between 1.5 and just over 2 million years ago.

Not quite yesterday.

Meave Leakey: Well, it's getting closer to yesterday.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. We're looking at the time of the emergence of the genus Homo and the emergence of Homo erectus, which is a time where there's a lot of evidence that's been found. A lot of all those things that we were finding in the '70s and '80s really fit into that time. But there's many, many questions. I think the more specimens you have, the more questions there are to answer. So there's many, many questions related to "Why does Homo erectus move out of Africa when no other species had done that? Why did the brain start to expand? What made Homo? Why did our ancestors start making stone tools? What was the environmental stimulus for all these things to happen?" So that we're looking at those sort of questions.

Ultimately, what anyone working in the field wants is something that gives you the maximum amount of information. Nothing gives you more information than a skeleton with a skull, but it's the most difficult thing to find. Anything that can give you information that will answer a particular question is important. But if you have a complete skull and mandible and a face, you're going to have much more information than if you just have a mandible, or you just have the back of a skull, or you just have the face. You're looking for the most complete things you can find. Personally, I think the postcranial -- the skeleton -- is really going to help with taxonomic problems. If we had some good skeletal material we could begin to sort out all those different species, and what they're doing, and why they're all there at once. Those sort of questions.

Your discoveries have had a lot of implications. There was an understanding that human evolution proceeded in a straight line, from one species, to the next, to us. You've sort of turned that on its head, haven't you?

Meave Leakey: Well, we didn't turn that on its head. All the work in East Africa has turned it on its head gradually. That began at Olduvai, because Louis and Mary found different species contemporaneously at Olduvai. We just added more specimens that enforce that view.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. For me, the most important message that comes out of this whole study is that we have a common origin and we are one species. That common origin is really important, because there's so many prejudices in today's world. There are so many divisions, cultural divisions, but they're all skin deep. Even our skin color doesn't mean anything in terms of evolution. It just means that our closest ancestors were living in a different latitude from people with dark skins, people with pale skins. It just determines which latitude your recent ancestors lived in. So I think to remember that we're one species, with one common ancestor, is a very unifying theme. Anything that helps reduce prejudices, and makes people realize that different cultures and different traditions are just things that enrich our lives, rather than things to be the cause of wars and conflicts and things, is important.

One of your daughters is also involved in paeloanthropology now, isn't she?

Meave Leakey: One daughter, yes. My oldest daughter, Louise, is now working with me, so we're working together, which is really nice. She flies a plane and is very good at organizing things, so she's basically in the driving seat now and she does all the logistics and organization of the field work.

What about your other daughter?

Meave Leakey: She's working at the World Bank. She got more into development and economics and that sort of thing. I think they both wanted to do something for Kenya and I think Samira felt that development and economics would be one way that she could actually do something like that. At the moment she's working in Washington, D.C., with the World Bank.

For a young person who doesn't know about your field, how would you describe what makes it so exciting?

Meave Leakey: I think it's the same for any science. We're just doing another sort of science.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. All scientists are driven by this enormous curiosity. They want to know why something does this, or why something looks like that, or how something works. Every scientist is just driven by this enormous curiosity to find the answer to some question. It's the same with us. We're wandering around in the desert, in the wind and the sun and the heat, and we know if we look hard enough, we're going to find a fossil that will tell us something we didn't know before. It's incredibly obsessive really. You just know if you keep at it, you know you're going to get the answer. The frustration is that you can't do it all the time, because you have to take breaks, and you have to write up, and you have to raise money and all this sort of thing. So I think that, for anyone going into science, whatever branch of science, they have that same curiosity that drives them.

[ Key to Success ] Passion

Thank you. It has been wonderful talking with you.

Meave Leakey: Thank you.

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