Mary Leakey

Mary Douglas Leakey, FBA (née Nicol, 6 February 1913 – 9 December 1996) was a British paleoanthropologist who discovered the first fossilised Proconsul skull, an extinct ape believed to be ancestral to humans. She also discovered the robust Zinjanthropus skull at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, eastern Africa. For much of her career she worked with her husband, Louis Leakey, at Olduvai Gorge, where they uncovered fossils of ancient hominines and the earliest hominins, as well as the stone tools produced by the latter group. Mary Leakey developed a system for classifying the stone tools found at Olduvai. She discovered the Laetoli footprints, and at the Laetoli site she discovered hominin fossils that were more than 3.75 million years old.

During her career, Leakey discovered fifteen new species of animal. She also brought about the naming of a new genus.

In 1972, after the death of her husband, Leakey became director of excavations at Olduvai. She maintained the Leakey family tradition of palaeoanthropology by training her son, Richard, in the field.

Biography Childhood Mary Leakey was born on 6 February 1913, in London, England to Erskine Edward Nicol and Cecilia Marion (Frere) Nicol. The Nicol family moved to numerous locations in the United States, Italy and Egypt where Erskine painted watercolours that he brought back and sold in England. Mary began to develop an enthusiasm for Egyptology during these travels.

On her mother's side, Mary was a great-great-great-granddaughter of antiquarian John Frere and shared this same ancestry with historian and archaeologist Sheppard Frere. The Frere family had been active abolitionists in the British colonial empire during the 19th century and established several communities for freed slaves. Three of these communities were still in existence when Leakey published her 1984 autobiography: Freretown, Kenya; Freretown, South Africa; and Freretown, India.

The Nicols spent much of their time in southern France where young Mary became fluent in French. In 1925, when Mary was 12, the Nicols stayed at the commune, Les Eyzies, at a time when Élie Peyrony, a French archaeologist and prehistorian, was excavating a cave there. Peyrony was not excavating scientifically during that early stage of archaeology and did not understand the significance of much of what he found. Mary received permission to go through the remnants of his dig. This was where her interests in prehistory and archaeology were sparked. She started a collection of points, scrapers and blades from the dump and developed her first system of classification.

The family relocated to Cabrerets, a village of Lot, France. Mary met Abbé Lemozi, the village priest, who befriended her and became her mentor for a time. The two toured Pech Merle cave to view the prehistoric paintings of bison and horses.

Education In the spring of 1926, when Mary was thirteen years old, her father died of cancer and Mary and her mother returned to London. Mary was placed in a local Catholic convent to be educated, and she later boasted of never passing an examination there. After the second expulsion, her mother hired two tutors, who were no more successful than the nuns. After the unsuccessful tutors, her mother hired a governess.

Mary's particular interests centered on illustration and archaeology, but formal university admission was impossible with her academic record. Her mother contacted a professor at Oxford University about possible admission, and was encouraged not to apply, as it would be a waste of her time. Mary had no further contact with the university until it awarded her an honorary doctoral degree in 1981.

The small family moved to Kensington, in West London, where, though unregistered, Mary attended lectures in archaeology and related subjects at University College and at the London Museum, where she studied under Mortimer Wheeler.

Mary applied to work on a number of summer excavations. Wheeler was the first to accept her for a dig. It took place at St Albans at the Roman site of Verulamium. Her next dig was at Hembury, a Neolithic site, under Dorothy Liddell, who trained her for four years until 1934. Her illustrations of tools for Liddell drew the attention of Gertrude Caton Thompson, and, in late 1932, she entered the field as an illustrator for Caton Thompson's book The Desert Fayoum.

Life

Through Caton Thompson, an English archaeologist, Mary met Louis Leakey, who was in need of an illustrator for his book Adam's Ancestors (1934). While she was doing that work they became romantically involved. Leakey was still married and his son Collin had just been born when they moved in with each other. They married after Frida Leakey divorced him in 1936.

Mary and Louis Leakey had three sons: Jonathan, born in 1940, Richard in 1944, and Philip in 1949. Their fourth child, a daughter, died as a baby. The boys grew up with the same love of freedom that their parents had become accustomed to. Mary would not even allow guests to shoo away the pet hyraxes that helped themselves to food and drink at the dinner table. In her autobiography, she rarely mentioned her pregnancies or the difficulties she faced while raising children in Kenya. She smoked a lot, first cigarettes and then cigars, and usually dressed as though completing an excavation.

While her husband was alive, they published many joint findings. However, her contributions were often credited to her husband.

Throughout the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, Mary and Louis Leakey worked at Later Stone Age, Neolithic and Iron Age archaeological sites in central Kenya, such as Hyrax Hill and Njoro River Cave. In October 1948, Mary discovered a Proconsul africanus skull on Rusinga Island. After dusting the topsoil away, she found "two large teeth set in the curve of a jaw" and drove back to camp exclaiming "I've got him!" Active excavation began the following day and a partial cranium was unearthed within a few weeks, though it had to be reconstructed from fragments scattered in the scree. After examining the cranium, Louis Leakey concluded it was of a species ancestral to humans, the australopithecines. He eventually dubbed the find Zinjanthropus boisei, "East Africa man"—Zinj is an ancient Arabic word for the East African coast. The name was later revised to Paranthropus boisei, and by some to Australopithecus boisei; a consensus on its classification is still in debate.

In the 1960s the Leakeys started to work with the young Kamoya Kimeu with Mary particularly valuing his expertise. The family trained him in paleontology, evolutionary theory and excavating techniques, which he then trained the next generations of Kenyan fossil finders in, as he became a highly respected Kenyan paleontologist and curator.

After her husband died in 1972, Mary Leakey continued their work at Olduvai and Laetoli. It was at the Laetoli site that she discovered hominin fossils that were more than 3.75 million years old.

From 1976 to 1981, Leakey and her staff uncovered the Laetoli hominin footprint trail which had been tracked through a layer of volcanic ash some 3.6 million years ago. The subsequent years were filled with research at Olduvai and Laetoli, follow-up work to discoveries, and preparing publications.

Throughout her career, Leakey discovered fifteen new species of animals, and one new genus. She was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1979.

The Mary Leakey Girls' High School, a secondary school for girls near Kikuyu Town, was named after Mary's mother-in-law, Mary Bazett Leakey, mother of her husband, Louis Leakey.

In the video game Civilization VI, Leakey is a 'Great Scientist' that players can recruit. Her unique ability grants extra science and tourism to artifacts.

Awards and honours Honorary D.Sc., University of the Witwatersrand, 1968 Honorary DSSc, Yale, 1976 Honorary D.Sc., University of Michigan, 1980 Honorary D.Litt., Oxford, 1981 Gold Medal of Society of Woman Geographers, 1975

Books authored Excavations at Njoro River Cave (with Louis Leakey), 1950 Olduvai Gorge: Excavations in Beds I and II, 1960–1963, 1971 Olduvai Gorge: My Search for Early Man, 1979 Africa's Vanishing Art: The Rock Paintings of Tanzania, 1983 Disclosing the Past, 1984