Born in Africa_ The Quest for the Origins of Human Life - Martin Meredith [40]
The British naturalist, Charles Darwin, speculated that the origins of humankind were likely to be found in Africa, but his theory was generally dismissed for half a century.
In one of his journals, Darwin sketched a “Tree of Life” with multiple branches, a prescient idea that eventually proved to be accurate.
Ernst Haeckel, an influential German biologist, argued that Asia, not Africa, was the most likely birthplace of humankind.
Haeckel’s Tree of Life differed from Darwin’s. It showed a main trunk leading upward from ‘lower’ forms towards humankind at the pinnacle of creation.
Raymond Dart, an Australian scientist whose claims that a hominid skull known as the Taung child came from a line of proto-humans was ridiculed by the British scientific establishment.
Robert Broom, a Scottishborn palaeontologist, at work in the field in South Africa. His discoveries supported Dart’s claims and helped establish australopithecines as a significant category of human ancestors.
Mary and Louis Leakey at work in the field at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. It was not until 1959, after nearly 30 years of searching at Olduvai, that Mary made their first major hominid discovery there: a skull belonging to a 1.75 million-year-old australopithecine that the Leakeys named Zinjanthropus boisei, but it was more generally known as Nutcracker Man because of its huge teeth.
Mary Leakey pictured beneath a cliff at Olduvai in 1955.
Expeditions to Olduvai were always a family affair that included Mary’s beloved Dalmatians. Their son Philip also joined in the work, making discoveries of his own.
Louis Leakey pictured with Zinjanthropus and friends.
Mary Leakey pictured in 1972.
Fossil-hunters at work at Olduvai.
Ol doinyo Lengai. The Maasai’s ‘Mountain of God’, the only volcano still active on the eastern branch of Africa’s Great Rift Valley.
Olduvai Gorge.
Camels at Koobi Fora. Richard and Meave Leakey, Kamoya Kimeu and Peter Nzube ride out into the desert in search of fossils. The experiment with camels was largely impractical and soon abandoned.
Inspecting fossils at Koobi Fora, with Kamoya Kimeu (top right).
Richard Leakey with a complete skull of an Australopithecus robustus he found at East Turkana in 1969.
Richard Leakey holding two prized hominid specimens: a complete skull of an Australopithecus robustus and a skull known as 1470 that became the subject of a fierce controversy.
Alan Walker, a British-born palaeontologist involved in several key discoveries in the Turkana region of Kenya.
Donald Johanson points out features of ‘Lucy’, an australopithecine dating back 3.2 million years ago that he found in 1974 in the Afar region of Ethiopia.
Donald Johanson and Richard Leakey held a joint press conference in March 1976 to explain their recent hominid discoveries. They were later to become bitter rivals.
Tim White (far left) meets Donald Johanson for the first time in January 1976 in a museum laboratory in Nairobi. Also present are Richard Leakey and Bernard Wood, a British anatomist. Johanson had just arrived from Hadar, Ethiopia, with his collection of fossils known as the First Family.
CHAPTER 8
HADAR
THE AFAR TRIANGLE is one of the most forbidding regions on earth, a tormented land of active volcanoes, blistering salt flats, boiling hot springs and sunken deserts lying far below sea level. During the day, it becomes a furnace, swept by scorching winds and sandstorms; during the night, its baking lava fields radiate immense stores of heat. Temperatures recorded in the Afar Triangle are among the highest in the world.
The local Afar nomads have an equally ferocious reputation. Several parties of European travellers venturing into their territory during the late nineteenth century were slaughtered and their bodies mutilated. A British mining engineer, Lewis Nesbitt, and two Italian companions became the first white strangers to survive an 800-milejourney across Afar lands in 1928,