Forbidden Archeology_ The Full Unabridged Edition - Michael A. Cremo [469]
The Leakeys sent the OH 8 foot bones to Michael Day for reconstruction. Day, recalling his impressions on completing his work, later said: “My hair stood on end. The foot was completely human” (Cole 1975, p. 253).
Like Zinjanthropus, the fossils of the new creatures were found along with broken animal bones and stone tools, scattered across a so-called living floor.
Some distance away from one of the new sites, but at the same level, a circle of large stones was found. The Leakeys interpreted this as the foundation for a windbreak made of brush, giving rise to speculation that the large-brained Olduvai hominid had made use of base camps.
Louis Leakey decided he had now come upon the real toolmaker of the lower levels of Olduvai, the real first true human. His bigger brain confirmed his status, although it was Darwin himself who had said that “one cannot measure intelligence in cubic centimeters” (Wendt 1972, p. 246). A full report on the new Olduvai hominid was published in 1964 by Louis Leakey, John Napier, and Philip Tobias. In this paper (Leakey et al. 1964), they called the creature Homo habilis. The name, suggested by Raymond Dart, means, “handy man.” The designation Homo signified a close family relation to modern humans. As we shall see, however, many scientists doubted whether the honor was merited.
After the discovery of Homo habilis, Zinjanthropus, no longer the first true human, was demoted to Australopithecus boisei, a somewhat more robust variety of Australopithecus robustus. Both of these robust australopithecines had saggital crests, and are regarded not as human ancestors but as evolutionary offshoots that eventually became extinct.
The whole business of saggital crests complicates matters somewhat. Male gorillas and some male chimpanzees also have saggital crests, whereas the females of these species do not (Fix 1984, p. 32). This leads to the possibility that creatures assigned to different australopithecine species, on the grounds that some have saggital crests and others do not, may simply represent sexual variants within a single species. For example, Mary Leakey (1971, p. 281) said: “The possibility that A. robustus and A. africanus represent the male and female of a single species deserves serious consideration.” If the possibility raised by Mary Leakey were found to be correct, this would mean that generations of experts have been wildly mistaken about the australopithecines.
11.4.3 Leakey’s Views on human evolution
With the discovery at Olduvai Gorge of Homo habilis, a creature contemporary with the early australopithecines but with a bigger brain, Louis Leakey believed he had excellent evidence supporting his view that neither Australopithecus nor Homo erectus were in the direct line of human ancestry (Figure 11.7). He later wrote: “For too long scientists have been confused by earlier theories and in particular by those which derived Homo sapiens from classical forms of Neanderthal man, which in turn was supposed to have been derived from Homo erectus, that in turn was said to have been originated in the Australopithecines. . . . Today the vast amount of evidence that has been accumulated shows us clearly that the stock which was leading to ourselves—as distinct from Homo erectus—was already present some 2 million years ago in East Africa and that, at that time, it was contemporary with Australopithecus. We should therefore expect to find evidence that true Homo, as well as primitive Australopithecus, was already present during the late stages of the Pliocene, about 4 million years ago” (L. Leakey 1971, p. 25).
Figure 11.7. According to Louis Leakey (1960d, pp. 210 – 211; 1971, p. 27), neither Australopithecus nor Homo erectus was ancestral to modern humans. The Neanderthals, said Leakey (1971, p. 27), were