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The Kenyan Aurignacian is now called the Kenyan Capsian, and the industry referred to above is called Upper Kenyan Capsian C. An Upper Kenyan Capsian C industry is found at Gamble’s Cave, Kenya. Gamble’s Cave is considered Holocene, or less than 10,000 years old (Oakley et al. 1977, pp. 36–37).

The presence of tools characteristic of anatomically modern humans just below Bed V and in the basal layers of Bed V at Olduvai Gorge is significant. The tools lend support to the idea that anatomically modern humans, as represented by Reck’s skeleton, were present in this part of Africa at least 400,000 years ago. Alternatively, one could attribute the tools to Homo erectus. But this would mean granting to Homo erectus toolmaking abilities substantially greater than scientists currently accept.

In The Stone Age Races of Kenya (1935), Leakey repeated his view that Reck’s skeleton had been buried into Bed II from a land surface that existed during the formation of Bed V. But now he favored a time much later in that period, contemporary with the Upper Kenyan Capsian C industry at Gamble’s Cave. Rainer Protsch (1974, p. 382) wrote: “The contemporaneity was not based on association of the hominids in both localities with that culture, but on the association of one with that culture [at Gamble’s Cave] and similar physical types of the hominids in both sites.” In our discussion of discoveries made in China, we examined the practice of morphological dating. Here again we see the primary role that the morphology of a skeleton plays in assigning it a date. And Leakey was not alone. Concerning the dating of Reck’s skeleton, Protsch (1974, p. 382) noted: “Weinert [1934] argued against an early age of these Homo sapiens remains from a purely theoretical evolutionary point of view.”

In 1971, Mary Leakey repeated the position taken by her husband in The Stone Age Races of Kenya: “The skull is of Homo sapiens type and resembles those of the Kenya Capsian from Gamble’s Cave II and Naivasha Railway Rockshelter in Kenya. A living site with a microlithic industry dated about 10,000 b.p. is known to exist within a short distance of the Olduvai burial and it is possible that the two are associated” (M. Leakey 1971, p. 225).

But even if the hypothesis that the skeleton was buried into Bed II during the deposition of Bed V is accepted, the skeleton could still be up to 400,000 years old. As mentioned above, that is when the post-Bed IV sediments began to accumulate at Olduvai. Other than its anatomically modern character, the Leakeys had little justification for assigning Reck’s skeleton to recent rather than earlier Bed V times.

11.1.5 The Radiocarbon Dating of Reck’s skeleton

Reiner Protsch later attempted to remedy this situation by dating Reck’s skeleton itself. Without such a determination, all that could truthfully be said (granting the Bed V burial hypothesis) was that the skeleton could be anywhere from 400,000 to perhaps a few thousand years old.

In 1929, Mollison had measured the organic content of Reck’s skeleton under ultraviolet light, hoping to gain insight into its age. Sonia Cole (1975, p. 93), Leakey’s biographer, said: “he found a great contrast between it and very recent bones on the one hand and the fossil fauna from Olduvai Bed II on the other.” According to Cole, the differences in organic content indicated to Mollison that the bones were of different ages. In particular, Reck’s skeleton would have to be younger than the other fossils found in Bed II. Mollison’s ultraviolet measurements are said to have substantially influenced Leakey to change his mind about the antiquity of Reck’s skeleton (Cole 1975, p. 93).

But Protsch contradicted Cole’s statement, quoted above, that Mollison had found the organic content of Reck’s skeleton to be different from that of the fauna from Bed II. Protsch (1974, p. 380) said Mollison had found “identical results for the organic content of the hominid and the fauna of