Mary Leakey

Mary ( Douglas Nicol ) Leakey ( born February 6, 1913 in London, † December 9, 1996 in Nairobi ) was a British archaeologist. She was one of the most paleoanthropologists of the 20th century and found, among others, in 1959 the first fossil of a " Zinjanthropus " ( Paranthropus boisei ), the so-called nutcracker man.

Mary Leakey was married to Louis Leakey, who was also paleoanthropologist. Her sons Richard and Jonathan are also known as " big names " among paleoanthropologists.

Career

Mary Douglas Nicol was the daughter of the then -known landscape painter Erskine Edward Nicol and amateur painter Cecilia Marion Frere, who lived in France for many years in the Dordogne. Frequent visits by prehistoric and archaeological sites in France aroused already in it as a small child 's interest in such issues; Moreover, her father was friends with Howard Carter, who discovered Tutankhamun 's grave in Egypt. The acquaintance with the family with a priest and amateur archaeologist Mary could help with excavations at the age of ten years and learned so much about stone age cave paintings and stone tools.

Her father died when she was 13 years old, so she went back to London with her mother, who wanted to send her there a proper education. Mary, however, was expelled for insubordination several times at school, what they later thus established that the school was " totally unconnected with the real life " was. At 17, however, she noticed that she had hoped for their future career as an archaeologist obstructed by the lack of a formal university degree. In 1930 she heard nevertheless lectures on archeology and geology and ( several times unsuccessfully ) applied as an employee for archaeological excavations in England. Finally, however, she had success with an application and fell rapidly to by their ability to make accurate scientific posture drawings and drawings of finds.

At a dinner party in Cambridge in 1933, she met Louis Leakey know. They fell in love, Mary accompanied him on his next expedition to Tanzania and then moved in with Louis. Thereupon his wife Frida divorced, and shortly afterwards married Louis and Mary - which led to a major scandal and Louis ' academic career opportunities in England zunichtemachte. 1937 both went to further excavations to Kenya and a few years later to Tanzania.

1940 their son Jonathan was born in 1943 her daughter Mary and her son Richard in 1944 finally came to the world. In the early years the family suffered in Africa under considerable financial difficulties, which were overcome only in 1960 - but this has never led to a stabilization of the relationship between Mary and Louis: From 1968, they lived hardly together, mainly due to the many escapades of Louis was due.

Scientific achievements

In Kenya, Mary Leakey made ​​in October 1948 on the island of Rusinga in Lake Victoria her first major find: the hitherto most complete skull of a 18 million years old Proconsul africanus (archive number KNM- RU 7290 ), which was considered one of the oldest pre-human discoveries in Africa; its exact position in the pedigree of anthropoids is still controversial.

Because of political unrest, Leakey had to leave shortly after Kenya and went again to Tanzania, where Mary Leakey copied about 1600 Stone Age drawings, which became the basis of her book Africa's Vanishing Art later. Many of the detained by her drawings were lost shortly thereafter by vandalism, so that their copies were given a permanently high scientific value.

Worldwide famous Mary Leakey was but only after she had found a skull at Olduvai Gorge on July 17, 1959, which was still largely intact and in which even teeth put in place in the upper jaw: the then Zinjanthropus or simply " Zinji " Paranthropus boisei mentioned, the first specimen of its kind and also the oldest fossil ever found at that time a representative of the Hominini. Shortly after her son Jonathan took place on November 2, 1960 the remains of the first ever found Homo habilis. According to the findings of " Zinji " and " Jonny 's Child " sufficiently many lenders now could finally be found for further excavations.

Even after the death of her husband in 1972, she organized further excavations in Olduvai area in which 1978 in the vicinity of the Laetoli footprints famous two upright side by side running hominids were discovered, one großfußigen and a kleinfußigen. Mary Leakey she gestured as traces of individuals of the genus Homo, other researchers ( among others Donald Johanson ) they arranged the genus Australopithecus.

In 1984 Mary Leakey her autobiography " Disclosing the Past" and was until shortly before her death - now blind in one eye - even on their excavation sites in Tanzania present. For her life's work, it was that had no academic degree, honored by such prestigious institutions as the University of Chicago, Yale University, the University of Oxford and the Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Works

• Olduvai Gorge, Volume 3: Excavations in Beds I and II, 1960-1963. Cambridge University Press, 1971.
• Olduvai Gorge: My Search for Early Man. William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd.. , London 1979, ISBN 0002116138th
• Disclosing the Past: An Autobiography. Doubleday & Co., Inc., New York, 1984, ISBN 0385189613th
• As Eds.: Laetoli: A Pliocene site in Northern Tanzania. Clarendon Press, Oxford Science Publications, 1987, ISBN 0-19-854441-3.