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11.1.4 Reck and Leakey change their Minds

Despite the broadsides from Cooper and Watson, Reck and Leakey seemed to be holding their own. But in August 1932, P. G. H. Boswell, a geologist from the Imperial College in England, gave a perplexing report in the pages of Nature.

Professor Mollison had sent to Boswell from Munich a sample of what Mollison said was the matrix surrounding Reck’s skeleton. Mollison, it may be noted, was not a completely neutral party. As early as 1929, he had expressed his belief that the skeleton was that of a Masai tribesman, buried in the not too distant past (Protsch 1974, p. 380).

Boswell (1932, p. 237) stated that the sample supplied by Mollison contained “(a) pea-sized bright red pebbles like those of Bed 3, and (b) chips of concretionary limestone indistinguishable from that of Bed 5 and enclosing at least one mineral (an amphibole), in relative abundance, not found in Beds 2 and 3, but present in Bed 4.” Boswell took all this to mean that the skeleton had been buried after the deposition of Bed V, which is topped by a hard layer of steppelime, or calcrete. At the time he wrote his report, he was unaware that there was also a layer of calcrete at the bottom of Bed V.

The presence of the bright red Bed III pebbles and Bed V limestone chips in the sample sent by Mollison certainly calls for some explanation. Reck and Leakey had both carefully examined the matrix at different times over a period of

20 years. They did not report any mixture of Bed III materials or chips of limestonelike calcrete, even though they were specifically looking for such evidence. So it is remarkable that the presence of red pebbles and limestone chips should suddenly become apparent.

In short, we are faced with contradictory testimony. It would appear that at least one of the participants in the discovery and the subsequent polemics was guilty of extremely careless observation—or cheating.

Reck had studied the matrix at the site. And both Reck and Leakey had studied the matrix directly in contact with the skeleton in Munich. Did they fail to see the red pebbles and chips of limestone, or make false statements about their absence in the matrix? Neither possibility seems likely.

Later, Boswell and other scientists in England studied a sample sent from Munich, in isolation from any of the bones. Mollison, we have already noted, had for years expressed his own view that the skeleton was a recent burial. His statement assuring Boswell that the sample was part “of the material in which the Oldoway skeleton had been embedded” is thus open to question.

Cooper and Watson (1932b) had pointed out in one of their letters to Nature: “The photographs published by Prof. Reck show that the whole of the upper and a good deal of the lateral surfaces of the skeleton were exposed during the excavation made for its removal. . . . It need scarcely be pointed out that the only material certainly of the grave infilling carried to Munich in this way is that which is contained within the ribs and between the limbs and the trunk.” Did Mollison carefully take his sample from within the ribs or between the legs of Reck’s skeleton? Or did he take it from matrix materials that may have come from elsewhere on the block of sediment that contained the skeleton? None of the reports we have seen give any information that would allow these questions to be answered.

Even if the matrix sample supplied by Mollison was suitable for analysis, the presence of limestone chips (containing amphibole) is of ambiguous significance. E. J. Wayland (1932), head of the Geological Survey of Uganda, wrote in a letter to Nature: “The fact that the matrix . . . contained bits of concretionary limestone containing a mineral characteristic of Bed 4 does not prove the burial to be post-Bed 5, for Bed 4 contains concretionary limestone, and for that matter so do the other beds, not excluding Bed 2.”

It seems that Boswell’s mineral test, if accepted at face value, most strongly supports a Bed IV burial. During such