Richard Leakey

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Richard Leakey : biography

19 December 1944 –

In June 2013, Leakey was awarded the Isaac Asimov Science Award from the American Humanist Association.SmashPipe, 5 June 2013:

Paleontology

Leakey’s career as a palaeoanthropologist did not begin with a dateable event or a sudden decision, as did Louis’; he was with his parents on every excavation, was taught every skill and was given responsible work even as a boy. It is not surprising that his independent decision making led him into conflict with his father, who had always tried to instill in him that very trait. After he gave some fossils to Tanzania and set Margaret to inventory Louis’ collections, Louis suggested he find work elsewhere in 1967.

Richard formed the Kenya Museum Associates (now Kenya Museum Society) with influential Kenyans in that year. Their intent was to ‘Kenyanize’ and improve the National Museum. They offered the museum 5000 pounds, 1/3 of its yearly budget, if it would place Leakey in a responsible position. He was given an observer’s seat on the board of directors. Joel Ojal, the government official in charge of the museum, and a member of the Associates, directed the chairman of the board to start placing Kenyans on it.

The Omo

Plans for the museum had not matured when Louis, intentionally or not, found a way to remove his confrontational son from the scene. Louis attended a lunch with Emperor Haile Selassie and President Jomo Kenyatta. The conversation turned to fossils and the Emperor wanted to know why none had been found in Ethiopia. Louis developed this inquiry into permission to excavate on the Omo River.

The expedition consisted of three contingents: French, under Camille Arambourg, American, under Clark Howell, and Kenyan, led by Leakey. Louis could not go because of his arthritis. Crossing the Omo in 1967, Leakey’s contingent was attacked by crocodiles, which destroyed their wooden boat. Expedition members barely escaped with their lives. Leakey radioed Louis for a new, aluminium boat, which the National Geographic Society was happy to supply.

On site, Kamoya Kimeu found a Hominid fossil. Leakey took it to be Homo erectus, but Louis identified it as Homo sapiens. It was the oldest of the species found at that time, dating to 160,000 years, and was the first contemporaneous with Homo neanderthalensis. During the identification process, Leakey came to feel that the college men were patronising him.This section is based on Morell Chapter 20, “To the Omo.”

Koobi Fora

During the Omo expedition of 1967, Leakey visited Nairobi and on the return flight the pilot flew over Lake Rudolph (now Lake Turkana) to avoid a thunderstorm. The map led Leakey to expect volcanic rock below him but he saw sediments. Visiting the region with Howell by helicopter, he saw tools and fossils everywhere. In his mind, he was already formulating a new enterprise.

In 1968 Louis and Leakey attended a meeting of the Research and Exploration Committee of the National Geographic Society to ask for money for Omo. Catching Louis by surprise, Leakey asked the committee to divert the $25,000 intended for Omo to new excavations to be conducted under his leadership at Koobi Fora. Leakey won, but chairman Leonard Carmichael told him he’d better find something or never "come begging at our door again." Louis graciously congratulated Leakey.

More was yet to come. By now the board of the National Museum was packed with Kenyan supporters of Leakey. They appointed him administrative director. The curator, Robert Carcasson, resigned in protest and Leakey was left with the museum at his command, which he, like Louis before him, used as a base of operations.Morell, Chapter 21, "Breaking Away." Although there was friendly rivalry and contention between Louis and Leakey, relations remained good. Each took over for the other when one was busy with something else or incapacitated, and Leakey continued to inform his father immediately of Hominid finds.

In the first expedition to Allia Bay on Lake Turkana, where the Koobi Fora camp came to be located, Leakey hired only graduate students in anthropology, as he did not want any questioning of his leadership. The students were John Harris and Bernard Wood. Also present was a team of Africans under Kamoya: a geochemist, Paul Abel, and a photographer, Bob Campbell. Margaret was the archaeologist. Leakey took to smoking a pipe to enhance his status, as did Kamoya. There were no leadership problems. In contrast to his father, Leakey ran a disciplined and tidy camp, although to find fossils, he did push the expedition harder than it wished.