Born in Africa_ The Quest for the Origins of Human Life - Martin Meredith [49]
To Johanson’s surprise and disappointment, his announcement about Australopithecus afarensis stirred little interest in the audience. No one asked a question or ventured an opinion. But for Mary, it marked the beginning of an open rift. When she subsequently learned that Johanson had included her as one of the joint authors of the naming paper on Australopithecus afarensis sent for publication to Kirtlandia , the house journal of the Cleveland Museum, she insisted that her name be removed. Publication was delayed and the paper had to be reprinted.
Relieved to be back in the field at Laetoli, Mary Leakey was rewarded with one of the most remarkable discoveries in the history of palaeoanthropology. In July 1978, a member of her team, Paul Abell, spotted what looked like the heel part of a hominid print on a section of hardened ash one mile from the camp. Initial excavations revealed two distinct human footprints. By the end of the 1978 field season, the Laetoli team had uncovered a total of forty-seven prints belonging to three individuals walking together on a trail stretching over seventy-five feet. Another twelve feet of the trail were uncovered during the 1979 season.
What the footprints proved—indisputably—was that 3.6 million years ago, human ancestors had walked upright with a free-striding gait and that the shape of their feet was strikingly similar to that of modern humans.
While Mary Leakey was savouring this triumph, the world of anthropology was engulfed in controversy over the advent of Australopithecus afarensis.
CHAPTER 10
BONES OF CONTENTION
WHAT BECAME known as ‘The Battle of the Bones’ began in January 1979 when an article by Johanson and White explaining their new interpretation of the origins of humankind was published as the main feature in the American journal Science, prompting widespread media interest. The press reported that ‘a previously unknown human ancestor’ combining a small-brained apelike head with a fully erect body had been discovered in Africa. In a front-page article, the New York Times pointed out that the new species—Australopithecus afarensis—presented a major challenge to conventional theories about human evolution.
Among the anthropological community, opinion about the merits of the Johanson-White hypothesis was divided. Attacks came from several different quarters. Richard Leakey rejected the notion that Australopithecus afarensis was the common ancestor of all later australopithecines and Homo; the common ancestor, he said, had not yet been found. He was ready to accept that Lucy was a new species of australopithecine; but he maintained that among the other Hadar fossils were examples of two different populations: Homo and Australopithecus. And he held fast to his view that the Homo lineage had much deeper origins than the 2-million-year threshold proposed by Johanson-White.
Mary Leakey’s response was far sharper. Furious at the way Johanson and White had purloined the Laetoli fossils for their own use, she dismissed their work at a Washington press conference in March 1979 as ‘not very scientific’. She believed that their real purpose was not so much to establish a link between the Hadar and Laetoli fossils as to secure for afarensis the older, proven date of the Laetoli fossils. The obvious choice for a type specimen for afarensis, she pointed out, was not LH-4 from Laetoli but Lucy. ‘It is regrettable’, she told Roger Lewin, ‘that the type specimen selected should be a worn mandible from Laetoli, when much better-preserved specimens are available