What do you think?
Rate this book
The Sediments Of Time: My Lifelong Search for the Past – A High-Stakes Memoir of Human Evolution and Climate Change in Kenya by a Female Scientist
Meave Leakey’s thrilling, high-stakes memoir—written with her daughter Samira—encapsulates her distinguished life and career on the front lines of the hunt for our human origins, a quest made all the more notable by her stature as a woman in a highly competitive, male-dominated field.
In The Sediments of Time , preeminent paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey brings us along on her remarkable journey to reveal the diversity of our early prehuman ancestors and how past climate change drove their evolution. She offers a fresh account of our past, as recent breakthroughs have allowed new analysis of her team’s fossil findings and vastly expanded our understanding of our ancestors.
Meave’s personal story is replete with drama, from thrilling discoveries on the shores of Lake Turkana—including the 3.5-million-year-old skull of the flat-faced man from Kenya, representing an important new branch of the human family—to run-ins with armed herders and every manner of wildlife, to raising her children and supporting her renowned paleoanthropologist husband Richard Leakey’s ambitions amidst social and political strife in Kenya. When Richard needs a kidney, Meave provides him with hers, and when he asks her to assume the reins of their field expeditions after he loses both legs in a plane crash, Meave steps in.
The Sediments of Time is the summation of a lifetime of Meave Leakey’s it is a compelling picture of our human origins and climate change, as well as a high-stakes story of ambition, struggle, and hope.
“A fascinating glimpse into our origins. Meave Leakey is a great storyteller, and she presents new information about the far-off time when we emerged from our apelike ancestors to start the long journey that has led to our becoming the dominant species on Earth. That story, woven into her own journey of research and discovery, gives us a book that is informative and captivating, one that you will not forget.”
—Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE, founder of the Jane Goodall Institute
In The Sediments of Time , preeminent paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey brings us along on her remarkable journey to reveal the diversity of our early prehuman ancestors and how past climate change drove their evolution. She offers a fresh account of our past, as recent breakthroughs have allowed new analysis of her team’s fossil findings and vastly expanded our understanding of our ancestors.
Meave’s personal story is replete with drama, from thrilling discoveries on the shores of Lake Turkana—including the 3.5-million-year-old skull of the flat-faced man from Kenya, representing an important new branch of the human family—to run-ins with armed herders and every manner of wildlife, to raising her children and supporting her renowned paleoanthropologist husband Richard Leakey’s ambitions amidst social and political strife in Kenya. When Richard needs a kidney, Meave provides him with hers, and when he asks her to assume the reins of their field expeditions after he loses both legs in a plane crash, Meave steps in.
The Sediments of Time is the summation of a lifetime of Meave Leakey’s it is a compelling picture of our human origins and climate change, as well as a high-stakes story of ambition, struggle, and hope.
“A fascinating glimpse into our origins. Meave Leakey is a great storyteller, and she presents new information about the far-off time when we emerged from our apelike ancestors to start the long journey that has led to our becoming the dominant species on Earth. That story, woven into her own journey of research and discovery, gives us a book that is informative and captivating, one that you will not forget.”
—Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE, founder of the Jane Goodall Institute
416 pages, Paperback
First published November 10, 2020
143 people are currently reading
1089 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews
June 29, 2021
A good book, with some slow patches. The highlights are her stories: she’s a wonderful storyteller! The slowest reading (that I eventually skimmed) was her geology stuff: a detailed geologic description of the Turkana Basin, their main field area, but with no decent map, no cross-section, and she’s not a geologist, so the descriptions just didn’t make sense (I’m a geologist). I’m really sorry that one of her geologist co-workers didn’t help out with this. As is, better for most readers just to skip it, rather than bog down. Which is my reading advice for the rest of the book. If it drags, skim. It did take me over a month to finish it. Still a worthwhile and engaging book. And the photos are great! Overall, 3.5+ stars, rounded up.
Some of her stories are just great: a (harmless) rock python liked to sleep in their old chest of drawers at their main field camp on Lake Turkana. She would wear something from a different drawer to avoid disturbing the snake!
The stories of husband Richard’s many health problems are harrowing. A plane-crash led to a double lower-leg amputation, and may have been sabotage. He’s had two kidney transplants (one from Meave) and a liver-transplant. At age 76 (2021) he remains active and in reasonably good health.
The Inquisitive Biologist has the best review I saw online:
https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2021...
Excerpt:
".... Meave [Leakey] is examining the Homo lineage and the question where we appeared from. This sees her tackling topics such as human childbirth and the role of grandmothers, Lieberman’s hypothesis of endurance running as a uniquely human strategy to run prey to exhaustion, palaeoclimatology and the mechanism of the Milankovitch cycles, the spread of Homo erectus around the globe (the Out of Africa I hypothesis), and the use of genetics to trace deep human ancestry. I feel that Meave overstretches herself a little bit in places here. Though her explanations are lucid and include some good illustrations, some relevant recent literature, on e.g. ancient DNA and Neanderthals is not mentioned.
Meave can draw on a deep pool of remarkable and amusing anecdotes that are put to good use to lighten up the text. And though the focus is on her professional achievements and the science, real life interrupts work on numerous occasions....."
Some of her stories are just great: a (harmless) rock python liked to sleep in their old chest of drawers at their main field camp on Lake Turkana. She would wear something from a different drawer to avoid disturbing the snake!
The stories of husband Richard’s many health problems are harrowing. A plane-crash led to a double lower-leg amputation, and may have been sabotage. He’s had two kidney transplants (one from Meave) and a liver-transplant. At age 76 (2021) he remains active and in reasonably good health.
The Inquisitive Biologist has the best review I saw online:
https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2021...
Excerpt:
".... Meave [Leakey] is examining the Homo lineage and the question where we appeared from. This sees her tackling topics such as human childbirth and the role of grandmothers, Lieberman’s hypothesis of endurance running as a uniquely human strategy to run prey to exhaustion, palaeoclimatology and the mechanism of the Milankovitch cycles, the spread of Homo erectus around the globe (the Out of Africa I hypothesis), and the use of genetics to trace deep human ancestry. I feel that Meave overstretches herself a little bit in places here. Though her explanations are lucid and include some good illustrations, some relevant recent literature, on e.g. ancient DNA and Neanderthals is not mentioned.
Meave can draw on a deep pool of remarkable and amusing anecdotes that are put to good use to lighten up the text. And though the focus is on her professional achievements and the science, real life interrupts work on numerous occasions....."
December 31, 2020
Meave Leakey wanted to be a marine biologist -- until she was informed that research ships in the 1960's had no facilities for female scientists, so sorry. So she switched to zoology instead, which got her hired by Louis Leakey to work with primates in Kenya. But once she met the Leakey family and went on a hunt for hominin fossils with them, she was hooked. It's been paleoanthropology for her ever since.
This memoir has some information about her childhood and eventual marriage to Richard Leakey, but it's primarily about looking for fossils (and seeking the financial support to do so) and putting together the story of human evolution, from the first hominins that began to stand on two legs and start developing big brains, up through the not-so-distant past when humans, Neandertals, and Denisovans inhabited the world at the same time, to the present, where we are the sole representatives of our genus.
It's a well-written, very accessible book. The combination of thrill and frustration when fossils are discovered came through strongly -- it's exciting to find something new, but also difficult to build family trees from the few teeth and bones that are usually all we have to work with. New specimens keep turning up that shake the relationships between early hominins, and new dating techniques are developed that also occasionally force scientists to rethink everything they thought they knew about a prehistoric locale. (Anyone who thinks "science is just a religion" or "scientists all agree with each other" should definitely read this book. There are some nasty disagreements between paleoanthropologists, and a constant sense of competition that keeps everyone on their toes. Even the Leakeys have some subjects they cannot discuss at the dinner table because they so strongly disagree. There is also great teamwork and camaraderie.)
I found this to be a very enjoyable and educational retrospective of Meave Leakey's entire career. She lays out human evolution (and some other animal evolution as well) with great connections and transitions between chapters, and I shared in her sense of discovery and mystery as I read.
Recommended primarily to people who care about human prehistory and paleontological digs, but if it sounds interesting to you, I'd say give it a shot.
This memoir has some information about her childhood and eventual marriage to Richard Leakey, but it's primarily about looking for fossils (and seeking the financial support to do so) and putting together the story of human evolution, from the first hominins that began to stand on two legs and start developing big brains, up through the not-so-distant past when humans, Neandertals, and Denisovans inhabited the world at the same time, to the present, where we are the sole representatives of our genus.
It's a well-written, very accessible book. The combination of thrill and frustration when fossils are discovered came through strongly -- it's exciting to find something new, but also difficult to build family trees from the few teeth and bones that are usually all we have to work with. New specimens keep turning up that shake the relationships between early hominins, and new dating techniques are developed that also occasionally force scientists to rethink everything they thought they knew about a prehistoric locale. (Anyone who thinks "science is just a religion" or "scientists all agree with each other" should definitely read this book. There are some nasty disagreements between paleoanthropologists, and a constant sense of competition that keeps everyone on their toes. Even the Leakeys have some subjects they cannot discuss at the dinner table because they so strongly disagree. There is also great teamwork and camaraderie.)
I found this to be a very enjoyable and educational retrospective of Meave Leakey's entire career. She lays out human evolution (and some other animal evolution as well) with great connections and transitions between chapters, and I shared in her sense of discovery and mystery as I read.
Recommended primarily to people who care about human prehistory and paleontological digs, but if it sounds interesting to you, I'd say give it a shot.
September 23, 2020
What an incredible life the author has lived! it's almost like a real life Indiana Jones. Her adventures, her discoveries, her relationships, she has really packed a lot into one lifetime. This book is a wonderful summation of the discoveries she, and her esteemed family, has made. I am in awe of her knowledge and dedication. There is a wealth of information and science in this book. At times I was getting overwhelmed and had to set the book aside and digest it for a bit. All in all, it is a great book.
March 10, 2021
The grande dame of palaeoanthropology reflects on a fulfilling career in an inspiring autobiography full of scientific detail. See my full review at https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2021...
April 7, 2021
Other than its sort of dorky title, this is an amazing book. Meave Leakey married Richard Leakey, son of Louis and Mary Leakey. This constitutes a royal family of archeologists and it looks like Meave and Richard's daughters are extending the family business.
The book follows the search in Africa for the earliest hominins, early man, both the elder Leakey's finds as well as Meave and Richard's. To round out the search she brings in most of the other searchers who have come across clues to ancient man around the world. Sediments is the first place I have seen a clear timeline of how we got to be. Meave also brings in that our scientific name, Homo sapiens, may be a misnomer as "intelligent man" seems to be doing his best to ruin the only place we can call home.
The book follows the search in Africa for the earliest hominins, early man, both the elder Leakey's finds as well as Meave and Richard's. To round out the search she brings in most of the other searchers who have come across clues to ancient man around the world. Sediments is the first place I have seen a clear timeline of how we got to be. Meave also brings in that our scientific name, Homo sapiens, may be a misnomer as "intelligent man" seems to be doing his best to ruin the only place we can call home.
December 19, 2020
More then a memoir, The Sediments of Time, is a fascinating read and insightful tour of research into human origins by one of the fields greats. Divulge into the depths of the authors research and its impact on human evolutionary studies, as well as details of the authors life and field research, which she clearly loves and imparts to us throughout the book.
October 30, 2021
The weakest of the anthropology memoirs and stories that I have read recently. I would recommend instead Kermit Pattison's "Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind". It has more science, more personal anecdotes—more of everything.
> I was technically a marine biologist. Or so I had planned, with my freshly minted joint degree in zoology and marine biology. But behold the world in the late 1960s. Homo sapiens had not, apparently, evolved so far as to allow female marine biologists onto ships. “We cannot employ you because we don’t have the facilities for you,” I had been told time and again by the men running the expeditions.
> I was technically a marine biologist. Or so I had planned, with my freshly minted joint degree in zoology and marine biology. But behold the world in the late 1960s. Homo sapiens had not, apparently, evolved so far as to allow female marine biologists onto ships. “We cannot employ you because we don’t have the facilities for you,” I had been told time and again by the men running the expeditions.
September 18, 2024
Meave Leakey has had a very eventful life. This book is well written. It is not a light read. You have to be interested in her work, and the origins of humans to get value from it. She does an excellent job and taking the reader through her work and how it relates to the bigger field of work in evolutionary human biology.
December 13, 2020
An account of an amazing, exciting life by one of the great paleo-anthropologists. Tough, gutsy and determined, she's a role model. The science can get a bit overwhelming at times, but it demonstrates the huge strides in knowledge, and the multi-disciplinary attack to reveal the deepest mysteries of the origins of humankind.
September 6, 2023
I wanted to like this book so much more than I did. It’s a stunningly impressive trek back through time with some of the most dedicated, renowned paleoanthropologists. The erudite language is daunting and makes the book relatively inaccessible to the average reader, but the reason I gave it only four stars is because there is SO much information, and it doesn’t seem to be organized in any cohesive structure. The book could have been about the trials and triumphs of the Leakey family, or a story about how they developed close working relationships with locals in their fossil hunts and the ensuing adventures/political strife, or the fascinating quest to find the missing links in our genetic heritage, or a narrative picture of human evolution in a changing world, or any number of other things. Instead, it’s a hard-to-follow mishmash of all these things. I would begin to get interested in one narrative thread, only to find it abandoned in the next chapter. Then it would pick up again many chapters later. In addition, the illustrations would have been much more helpful had they been placed alongside the relevant text instead of intermittently in full pages.
Meave Leakey is undoubtedly a brilliant individual and Richard one of the most tenacious scientists, and their work has contributed so much to our understanding of the history of human race. In the right hands to shape the story, this book would make a highly compelling documentary.
Meave Leakey is undoubtedly a brilliant individual and Richard one of the most tenacious scientists, and their work has contributed so much to our understanding of the history of human race. In the right hands to shape the story, this book would make a highly compelling documentary.
March 25, 2022
Part memoir and part science with the evolution of hominids. Leakey starts with her beginnings, born during WWII, but doesn’t linger long on her childhood, it was just enough. Although the book is a mix, it feels more an autobiography, as it keeps going back to her life but there is a ton of science, as that was a huge part of her life and what she is deeply involved in.
Her husband Richard came from the famous Leakeys and is quite an amazing person in his own right. He overcame many medical issues, first his kidney then a plane crash, which he survives but caused more medical issues. His perseverance to survive is extremely strong. I may have to read a book about him.
The children are mentioned, and they follow in the family business of becoming scientists and help on digs, they aren’t mentioned very much. A little surprising since one daughter is co-author of this book. Most of the book discusses the finds and discoveries in the field, and how that fits into what we know and have learned about the evolution of these ancient hominids. It is fascinating and the journey takes you places that may seem unrelated at first, but no, it all fits together.
This was a fantastic book! I listened to the audiobook, which was nicely narrated. However there are photos in the book, which do help to view while reading if you have access to those.
Her husband Richard came from the famous Leakeys and is quite an amazing person in his own right. He overcame many medical issues, first his kidney then a plane crash, which he survives but caused more medical issues. His perseverance to survive is extremely strong. I may have to read a book about him.
The children are mentioned, and they follow in the family business of becoming scientists and help on digs, they aren’t mentioned very much. A little surprising since one daughter is co-author of this book. Most of the book discusses the finds and discoveries in the field, and how that fits into what we know and have learned about the evolution of these ancient hominids. It is fascinating and the journey takes you places that may seem unrelated at first, but no, it all fits together.
This was a fantastic book! I listened to the audiobook, which was nicely narrated. However there are photos in the book, which do help to view while reading if you have access to those.
September 17, 2022
Africa is central to the quest for human origins, and Meave Leakey is one of the great paleoanthropologists in that adventure, mainly around Lake Turkana in northern Kenya. Right across the border in Ethiopia is the Lower Omo Valley, which Meave talks about and which is the setting of my memoir LAST DAYS IN NAKED VALLEY. So I was eager to learn more about discoveries around Turkana. Scientists often write compelling books on their eureka moments, yet Meave has gone one big step further by writing a deeply personal account that effortlessly sweeps in the science - never baffling, always intriguing. (With forays into Kenyan politics alongside her late husband Richard Leakey.)
January 20, 2021
Wow! Maeve Leakey writes a fascinating and engaging memoir of her search for the evolution of man, his shift to bipedalism.
You'll learn about evolution, archaeological excavation, how fossils are dated in the arid lands, volcanic ash layers, and sediments of Lake Turkana in NW Kenya. For every scientific term Leakey uses, there's a concise and illustrative explanation and often a history of the concept and scientific discovery.
From shifts in teeth as they adapt to new foods brought about by climate change, from changes in jaws, bones, and locomotion, Leakey takes the reader through it all. You'll even learn about the tectonic shifts and upheavals of eastern Africa in the 7 to 4 million year range.
The audio book narrator, Susan Myers, draws you into this lengthy history of science. For a review of the performance, see AudioFile Magazine http://www.audiofilemagazine.com
You'll learn about evolution, archaeological excavation, how fossils are dated in the arid lands, volcanic ash layers, and sediments of Lake Turkana in NW Kenya. For every scientific term Leakey uses, there's a concise and illustrative explanation and often a history of the concept and scientific discovery.
From shifts in teeth as they adapt to new foods brought about by climate change, from changes in jaws, bones, and locomotion, Leakey takes the reader through it all. You'll even learn about the tectonic shifts and upheavals of eastern Africa in the 7 to 4 million year range.
The audio book narrator, Susan Myers, draws you into this lengthy history of science. For a review of the performance, see AudioFile Magazine http://www.audiofilemagazine.com
February 14, 2021
A personal history of her life and career. Explaining and describing the growth of knowledge of fossils from Africa and beyond. Easy to read and understand. The way ice cores in the Antarctic are tied into Milankovitch cycles, changes in magnetism and other research in the field is fascinating.
Worth your time.
Worth your time.
September 12, 2021
A fascinating memoir by Meave Leakey! She has spent the past 50 years in Kenya working alongside her husband and in-laws searching for early hominin fossils, tracing the origin of man. Wonderful storytelling and a behind the scenes look at the life of a paleontologist, emphasizing the painstaking detail of the work they do.
November 6, 2021
In 1965, Meave Leakey accepted a job as a research assistant studying primates for Louis Leakey. That job turned led to a marriage to Richard Leakey (Louis's son) and an amazing career uncovering the traces of our ancient ancestors. We've all benefited from her arduous work.
August 17, 2022
About halfway through I wanted to stop reading and am proud that I endured to the end. Maeve Leakey struck me from the get-go as arrogant and snotty. She might not have been so in real life, that is merely how she came across in her writing. I found her stories of her studies fascinating if poorly told.
December 7, 2020
Not just her well written autobiography, but also an excellent overview of human evolution as told through research. A very informative read.
January 12, 2021
Meave Leakey is a real-life Indiana Jones. Her life has been filled with adventure, struggle, and discovery after amazing discovery that are detailed in her riveting autobiography,
The Sediments of Time: My Lifelong Search For The Past
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020).
The author's story begins with her birth during the middle of the London Blitz in 1942, then quickly moves on to her unconventional youth and to her dream to become a marine biologist, an unusual ambition for a woman in the early 1960s. Only after being repeatedly denied a place on a research vessel because these ships lacked facilities for female scientists (!!) did she begin looking around for other scientific opportunities. As luck would have it, she was invited to interview with Louis Leakey to care for his colony of live monkeys in Kenya. Soon after arriving on site, she entered another male-dominated scientific field when she began digging hominid fossils alongside Louis and Mary Leakey, contributing to the work they began almost 100 years ago.
This book, which her second daughter Samira helped write, includes brief details about Meave's life with husband, Richard, such as when he lost both legs in a plane crash that probably resulted from sabotage, and when she donated one of her kidneys to him after his failed, but the majority of the book focuses on Meave's long and celebrated career as she worked to better understand our own evolutionary history. It uses good old fashioned storytelling to combine science and field work to reveal the intellectual excitement of discovery and the huge strides made in our knowledge of human origins and evolution. Each new fossil that's unearthed adds to our growing body of knowledge, and each new advance in dating techniques and molecular biology refines that knowledge. Further, the author contextualized these discoveries within the local ecology and the landscape that was responding to the changing climate.
In my opinion, one of the most interesting findings is that modern-day people are not the pinnacle of a straightforward evolutionary trajectory extending from ancient ape-like creatures to modern humans, but instead, the fossil evidence increasingly shows that we are the product of a messy affair between a number of hominid species that lived alongside each other in the Turkana Basin and elsewhere.
I was disappointed by the illustrations, which were few and very far between. I especially wanted to see the geology and the landscape of Lothagam, which the author describes as "stunning", and also because she claimed that her work in this region was important for establishing her credibility as an competent fossil hunter both with her field crews and with funding sources. Unfortunately, not even a Google search provided much to look at.
I think that the book and its readers would have benefitted greatly from a timeline showing when the first hominids began to stand upright and to develop big brains, including the not-so-distant past when humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans coexisted, up to the present time. Additionally, because the author frequently mentions the usefulness of pig and elephant teeth for estimating the ages other fossils unearthed in the same sedimentary layers, a timeline or diagram illustrating the evolutionary progression of pig and elephant dentition and their locations in the various sediment layers would also have been helpful to familiarize readers with the time intervals being investigated.
Despite the scarcity of useful illustrations and diagrams, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in evolution (especially human evolution), or palaeontology, who is interested in what it’s like to do field work in Kenya, or who wants to know how one determined female scientist managed to accomplish so much at a time when most of the world’s women were trapped in a kitchen.
NOTE: Originally published at Forbes.com on 5 January 2021.
The author's story begins with her birth during the middle of the London Blitz in 1942, then quickly moves on to her unconventional youth and to her dream to become a marine biologist, an unusual ambition for a woman in the early 1960s. Only after being repeatedly denied a place on a research vessel because these ships lacked facilities for female scientists (!!) did she begin looking around for other scientific opportunities. As luck would have it, she was invited to interview with Louis Leakey to care for his colony of live monkeys in Kenya. Soon after arriving on site, she entered another male-dominated scientific field when she began digging hominid fossils alongside Louis and Mary Leakey, contributing to the work they began almost 100 years ago.
This book, which her second daughter Samira helped write, includes brief details about Meave's life with husband, Richard, such as when he lost both legs in a plane crash that probably resulted from sabotage, and when she donated one of her kidneys to him after his failed, but the majority of the book focuses on Meave's long and celebrated career as she worked to better understand our own evolutionary history. It uses good old fashioned storytelling to combine science and field work to reveal the intellectual excitement of discovery and the huge strides made in our knowledge of human origins and evolution. Each new fossil that's unearthed adds to our growing body of knowledge, and each new advance in dating techniques and molecular biology refines that knowledge. Further, the author contextualized these discoveries within the local ecology and the landscape that was responding to the changing climate.
In my opinion, one of the most interesting findings is that modern-day people are not the pinnacle of a straightforward evolutionary trajectory extending from ancient ape-like creatures to modern humans, but instead, the fossil evidence increasingly shows that we are the product of a messy affair between a number of hominid species that lived alongside each other in the Turkana Basin and elsewhere.
I was disappointed by the illustrations, which were few and very far between. I especially wanted to see the geology and the landscape of Lothagam, which the author describes as "stunning", and also because she claimed that her work in this region was important for establishing her credibility as an competent fossil hunter both with her field crews and with funding sources. Unfortunately, not even a Google search provided much to look at.
I think that the book and its readers would have benefitted greatly from a timeline showing when the first hominids began to stand upright and to develop big brains, including the not-so-distant past when humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans coexisted, up to the present time. Additionally, because the author frequently mentions the usefulness of pig and elephant teeth for estimating the ages other fossils unearthed in the same sedimentary layers, a timeline or diagram illustrating the evolutionary progression of pig and elephant dentition and their locations in the various sediment layers would also have been helpful to familiarize readers with the time intervals being investigated.
Despite the scarcity of useful illustrations and diagrams, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in evolution (especially human evolution), or palaeontology, who is interested in what it’s like to do field work in Kenya, or who wants to know how one determined female scientist managed to accomplish so much at a time when most of the world’s women were trapped in a kitchen.
NOTE: Originally published at Forbes.com on 5 January 2021.
April 25, 2021
What a fascinating life she's led. I enjoyed the beginning and end most, hearing her story; the fearless and ground breaking early career path and then the wrap up of climate change and the planet, how skin color evolved and species extinction. The middle was way deep in the weeds on fossils but I still loved hearing her read to me every day on my walks with her soothing British voice.
July 30, 2020
Thanks NetGalley and Meave Leakey for the opportunity to read this advance reader copy! This brilliant memoir/autobiography is thought provoking, engaging, well-written, and I read it in one go, even though it is not a short or quick read. I have followed what the Leakey family do for years, and was therefore excited to see that Meave is coming out with a book about her, and our (humans) lives.
It begins with her childhood and takes the reader through her and her family’s life, as well as all the scientific progress that has happened during her lifetime. There are many memorable moments and stories, which is why I could not stop reading the book. Meave’s life has been so rich and fulfilling that she does not go into detail about everything in her life, which I appreciate. She is sharing some of the toughest moments in her life, for example her husband Richard’s health problems and how they bravely plowed through them.
There is quite a bit of science in the book, and a lot about human bones and how she and her colleagues around the world have uncovered pieces of human history and our ancestors. There is still so much to be discovered, but everything written in this book that has already been discovered is fascinating. I do not want to discourage anyone from reading this book, but for a memoir it has more scientific facts and figures than expected.
I would definitely recommend this book to readers interested in human history, the Leakey family, science, Africa, primates, fascinating discoveries, and life in general. I think anyone who enjoys a good memoir with a lot of content will enjoy this book as well!
It begins with her childhood and takes the reader through her and her family’s life, as well as all the scientific progress that has happened during her lifetime. There are many memorable moments and stories, which is why I could not stop reading the book. Meave’s life has been so rich and fulfilling that she does not go into detail about everything in her life, which I appreciate. She is sharing some of the toughest moments in her life, for example her husband Richard’s health problems and how they bravely plowed through them.
There is quite a bit of science in the book, and a lot about human bones and how she and her colleagues around the world have uncovered pieces of human history and our ancestors. There is still so much to be discovered, but everything written in this book that has already been discovered is fascinating. I do not want to discourage anyone from reading this book, but for a memoir it has more scientific facts and figures than expected.
I would definitely recommend this book to readers interested in human history, the Leakey family, science, Africa, primates, fascinating discoveries, and life in general. I think anyone who enjoys a good memoir with a lot of content will enjoy this book as well!
November 10, 2020
I received an electronic copy of this book for free via NetGalley for an honest review.
This is a well-written and informative book, and while it is an autobiographical account of Meave Leakey's life, it's also very much a discussion of what the field of paleoanthropology has learned from many of the projects she's been involved in over her long career. It does make for interesting reading, though as someone whose knowledge of the field is pretty limited to a single undergraduate course I took as a gen ed about eight years ago, I had to Google things pretty frequently while reading.
Meave Leakey has led an interesting life, and it's certainly enjoyable to read a little bit about it. The first chapters address some of the challenges she faced as a woman in science in the 1960s--she was trained as a marine biologist, but ended up working in Africa because she was repeatedly denied a place on research vessels on the justification that they did not have facilities for female researchers aboard.
The book admittedly gets a little deep in the evolutionary biology weeds for me now and then; as I said, it is well-written and it's an interesting topic, but I occasionally had to remind myself that I will not be taking an exam on changes in dentition related to diet in a changing climate, and it's okay if I don't retain all this information. For someone who has a little bit more background in this area than I do, however, I suspect these sections would be especially fascinating.
This is a well-written and informative book, and while it is an autobiographical account of Meave Leakey's life, it's also very much a discussion of what the field of paleoanthropology has learned from many of the projects she's been involved in over her long career. It does make for interesting reading, though as someone whose knowledge of the field is pretty limited to a single undergraduate course I took as a gen ed about eight years ago, I had to Google things pretty frequently while reading.
Meave Leakey has led an interesting life, and it's certainly enjoyable to read a little bit about it. The first chapters address some of the challenges she faced as a woman in science in the 1960s--she was trained as a marine biologist, but ended up working in Africa because she was repeatedly denied a place on research vessels on the justification that they did not have facilities for female researchers aboard.
The book admittedly gets a little deep in the evolutionary biology weeds for me now and then; as I said, it is well-written and it's an interesting topic, but I occasionally had to remind myself that I will not be taking an exam on changes in dentition related to diet in a changing climate, and it's okay if I don't retain all this information. For someone who has a little bit more background in this area than I do, however, I suspect these sections would be especially fascinating.
October 31, 2020
Part memoir, part autobiography, Leakey opens her book with her birth and moves through her life until now. In between she speaks her mind on many topics not the least is climate change.
While I would imagine that most readers want to know about her life as a paleoanthropologist, but they must first wade through the details of her early life to get to the “good stuff.” There are portions where she goes into great detail about what she was doing as when she talks about when she takes over the field operations from Richard Leakey, her husband. Some of what she talks about may be above most readers’ interest level, like when she talks about the various eras the fossils she was interested in fell, i.e., the period where the apes and humans became separated, the science diverted from her story.
While the publisher calls this a “thrilling, high-stakes memoir,” there was neither “thrilling” nor high-stakes” anything until she actually she took over from her husband and became a fossil hunter. It was then that the hunt for another “Lucy” was at play and her story got really interesting.
If you love paleoanthropology and the hunt for fossils, you’ll undoubtedly immensely enjoy this book.
My thanks to Houghton Mifflin and NetGalley for an eARC.
While I would imagine that most readers want to know about her life as a paleoanthropologist, but they must first wade through the details of her early life to get to the “good stuff.” There are portions where she goes into great detail about what she was doing as when she talks about when she takes over the field operations from Richard Leakey, her husband. Some of what she talks about may be above most readers’ interest level, like when she talks about the various eras the fossils she was interested in fell, i.e., the period where the apes and humans became separated, the science diverted from her story.
While the publisher calls this a “thrilling, high-stakes memoir,” there was neither “thrilling” nor high-stakes” anything until she actually she took over from her husband and became a fossil hunter. It was then that the hunt for another “Lucy” was at play and her story got really interesting.
If you love paleoanthropology and the hunt for fossils, you’ll undoubtedly immensely enjoy this book.
My thanks to Houghton Mifflin and NetGalley for an eARC.
February 11, 2021
The Sediments Of Time, My lifelong Search For The Past
Meave Leakey, 2020
Who were the predecessors of modern humans? What were they like and where and when did they evolve into modern humans? The name Leakey has been almost synonymous with these questions for the last 70 years. Starting with Louis and Mary Leakey at Olduvai gorge, Tanzania in the 1950’s and 1960’s through Meave and Richard Leakey at Lake Turkana in Kenya, theirs has been a relentless quest for the origins and knowledge of our ancient ancestors. Meave Leakey’s new book is at one an autobiography of her life as a fossil hunter, paleoanthropologist but also an account of our most recent knowledge of human origins.
Imagine confronting this problem: a hundred jigsaw puzzles all mixed up together in a huge sandbox full of rocks and sand. This is the conundrum of the fossil hunter. Mixed together are pieces of teeth and bone form hundreds of different species of animals and also ancient humans all dispersed in a rock or rubble matrix. You have to be able to distinguish a piece of skull, mandible or molar of an ancient hominin from that of an ape, wild dog or hundreds of other contemporaneous creatures. Once you have sifted and sorted out the pieces, then you meticulously assemble and fit the pieces together to create a recognizable and scientifically useful specimen. At that point you begin the arduous collaborative and mental task of determining where and when the artifact fits into the scheme of human evolution. Such is the life of a fossil hunter depicted here.
Reading this book is somewhat akin to a lesson in human and primate skeletal anatomy. How does hominin anatomy differ from an ape? One fascinating thing you will learn is the extreme importance of the opposable thumb and flexible wrist in human evolution. An ape has a thumb about half the size of a human thumb. Our ability to precisely manipulate objects and construct precision tools are wholly dependent on this feature. The ape grasping hand is adapted to arboreal life in the trees. Bend your thumb at the knuckle and then try to pick up a pencil between your forefinger and thumb knuckle and you will understand how useful the adaptation of an opposable thumb would be. Bipedalism was crucial in freeing the use of manipulative hands and fossil evidence from East Africa indicates that both manipulative hands and bipedalism preceded the evolution of large brains by millions of years. Would our extraordinary large brains have evolved without these prior crucial developments? Probably not.
Bipedal remains in Africa date back approximately 4 million years ago. Why did the evolution of Hominins happen? Leakey’s and other’s researchers have concluded this development coincided with the onset of the Pleistocene age when the earth’s climate went into glacial cycles of about 100,000 years. Coincidentally geological forces caused the subsistence of the eastern rift valley. These two effects caused this part of East Africa to become dryer and resulted in forested areas becoming savannas. The increased mobility of a bipedal gait in this environment enabled a long-range food gathering advantage.
My take: Evolution seems to favor the evolution of mind and intelligence. In numerous separate instances brains have evolved in cephalopods, dolphins and mammals. In East Africa there was a rare concurrence of climatological, geological, and biologic factors that led to Homo Sapiens. The evolution of large brains coincided not only with bipedalism but crucially hands with the ability of precise manipulation of objects. Without all these attributes our domination of the planet and our development of complex technological civilization would not have been possible. Run this whole life on earth play over again and most likely we would not be here. My speculation: Does intelligent life exist elsewhere in the universe? Almost certainly. Do complex technological civilizations such as ours exist in the universe? Maybe but certainly a much rarer occurrence.
What makes this such a great book is that it combines the very compelling story of Meave’s life and experiences in East Africa with a compendium of reams of information on hominin evolution. Meave tells who she thinks we humans are in the epilogue to her book:
“It is our primate ancestry that we owe the morphological and behavioral patterns that thus far have been to our immense benefit. But today, this heritage is a double edged sword that could be our undoing. The unfortunate fact is that we are a greedy, acquisitive, and destructive species by nature – like monkeys. Do not mistake me, for I have loved monkeys ever since my early days caring for them at the Tigoni Research Centre. But when baboons breach the barriers we have erected and get into our vegetable garden, the destruction is a sight to behold and lament. They invariably leave a trail of devastation behind them. Half-eaten carrots, tomatoes flung about, and maize and potato plants ripped ruthlessly from the ground testify more to a destructive intent and willful gratification than to a pattern of sustainable foraging. The monkeys are doing no more than what we humans are doing on a far grander scale all over the planet – with our depletion of the oceans through overfishing and a wanton disregard for the bycatch, our unchecked logging in forests, our clearing of huge tracts of land for agriculture and urban settlements, our ever-increasing pollution of the atmosphere with chemicals and carbon dioxide, and our profligate, wanton, and senseless overconsumption and dumping of single-use plastic that has resulted in garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean twice the size of Texas. ---- Our footprint on the planet is so large that geologists have now designated a new epoch, Anthropocene, for our labours are now indelibly in new layers of sediments and the scars we have recorded in the earth’s surface. If we don’t survive, the rocks will bear witness to the havoc that we have wrought long after we are gone”.
Surely, we can have more wisdom than a troop of Baboons. Meave and researchers like her have done an invaluable service, have opened the door to our true origins, where we come from and who we really are as a species. JACK
Meave Leakey, 2020
Who were the predecessors of modern humans? What were they like and where and when did they evolve into modern humans? The name Leakey has been almost synonymous with these questions for the last 70 years. Starting with Louis and Mary Leakey at Olduvai gorge, Tanzania in the 1950’s and 1960’s through Meave and Richard Leakey at Lake Turkana in Kenya, theirs has been a relentless quest for the origins and knowledge of our ancient ancestors. Meave Leakey’s new book is at one an autobiography of her life as a fossil hunter, paleoanthropologist but also an account of our most recent knowledge of human origins.
Imagine confronting this problem: a hundred jigsaw puzzles all mixed up together in a huge sandbox full of rocks and sand. This is the conundrum of the fossil hunter. Mixed together are pieces of teeth and bone form hundreds of different species of animals and also ancient humans all dispersed in a rock or rubble matrix. You have to be able to distinguish a piece of skull, mandible or molar of an ancient hominin from that of an ape, wild dog or hundreds of other contemporaneous creatures. Once you have sifted and sorted out the pieces, then you meticulously assemble and fit the pieces together to create a recognizable and scientifically useful specimen. At that point you begin the arduous collaborative and mental task of determining where and when the artifact fits into the scheme of human evolution. Such is the life of a fossil hunter depicted here.
Reading this book is somewhat akin to a lesson in human and primate skeletal anatomy. How does hominin anatomy differ from an ape? One fascinating thing you will learn is the extreme importance of the opposable thumb and flexible wrist in human evolution. An ape has a thumb about half the size of a human thumb. Our ability to precisely manipulate objects and construct precision tools are wholly dependent on this feature. The ape grasping hand is adapted to arboreal life in the trees. Bend your thumb at the knuckle and then try to pick up a pencil between your forefinger and thumb knuckle and you will understand how useful the adaptation of an opposable thumb would be. Bipedalism was crucial in freeing the use of manipulative hands and fossil evidence from East Africa indicates that both manipulative hands and bipedalism preceded the evolution of large brains by millions of years. Would our extraordinary large brains have evolved without these prior crucial developments? Probably not.
Bipedal remains in Africa date back approximately 4 million years ago. Why did the evolution of Hominins happen? Leakey’s and other’s researchers have concluded this development coincided with the onset of the Pleistocene age when the earth’s climate went into glacial cycles of about 100,000 years. Coincidentally geological forces caused the subsistence of the eastern rift valley. These two effects caused this part of East Africa to become dryer and resulted in forested areas becoming savannas. The increased mobility of a bipedal gait in this environment enabled a long-range food gathering advantage.
My take: Evolution seems to favor the evolution of mind and intelligence. In numerous separate instances brains have evolved in cephalopods, dolphins and mammals. In East Africa there was a rare concurrence of climatological, geological, and biologic factors that led to Homo Sapiens. The evolution of large brains coincided not only with bipedalism but crucially hands with the ability of precise manipulation of objects. Without all these attributes our domination of the planet and our development of complex technological civilization would not have been possible. Run this whole life on earth play over again and most likely we would not be here. My speculation: Does intelligent life exist elsewhere in the universe? Almost certainly. Do complex technological civilizations such as ours exist in the universe? Maybe but certainly a much rarer occurrence.
What makes this such a great book is that it combines the very compelling story of Meave’s life and experiences in East Africa with a compendium of reams of information on hominin evolution. Meave tells who she thinks we humans are in the epilogue to her book:
“It is our primate ancestry that we owe the morphological and behavioral patterns that thus far have been to our immense benefit. But today, this heritage is a double edged sword that could be our undoing. The unfortunate fact is that we are a greedy, acquisitive, and destructive species by nature – like monkeys. Do not mistake me, for I have loved monkeys ever since my early days caring for them at the Tigoni Research Centre. But when baboons breach the barriers we have erected and get into our vegetable garden, the destruction is a sight to behold and lament. They invariably leave a trail of devastation behind them. Half-eaten carrots, tomatoes flung about, and maize and potato plants ripped ruthlessly from the ground testify more to a destructive intent and willful gratification than to a pattern of sustainable foraging. The monkeys are doing no more than what we humans are doing on a far grander scale all over the planet – with our depletion of the oceans through overfishing and a wanton disregard for the bycatch, our unchecked logging in forests, our clearing of huge tracts of land for agriculture and urban settlements, our ever-increasing pollution of the atmosphere with chemicals and carbon dioxide, and our profligate, wanton, and senseless overconsumption and dumping of single-use plastic that has resulted in garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean twice the size of Texas. ---- Our footprint on the planet is so large that geologists have now designated a new epoch, Anthropocene, for our labours are now indelibly in new layers of sediments and the scars we have recorded in the earth’s surface. If we don’t survive, the rocks will bear witness to the havoc that we have wrought long after we are gone”.
Surely, we can have more wisdom than a troop of Baboons. Meave and researchers like her have done an invaluable service, have opened the door to our true origins, where we come from and who we really are as a species. JACK
January 19, 2021
Having followed the Leakey's from almost the beginning, it was a pleasure to read Meave Leakey's memoir of her work at Lake Turkana and other parts of Kenya. While there are a few personal reflections, the book is mostly about her work and research.
I appreciated the map at the beginning of the book as well as the diagrams and color pictures. Forty, fifty years ago following the research of Louis and Mary Leakey, there were only a few divisions of pre-historic man. Now there are so many bones and skulls that have been found that there are so many more classifications. So much information to absorb. Just a wonderful, almost
a textbook.
I really admire that Ms. Leakey gave so much credit to all those in the field and their part in the exploration of the land and the finding of remains. One other thing that truly amazed me was the last picture in the book of Meave and husband Richard. I hadn't seen a picture of Richard in many years. Looking at that picture of Richard as an older man, the resemblance to his father, Louis, was so strong that I thought I was looking at Louis.
I appreciated the map at the beginning of the book as well as the diagrams and color pictures. Forty, fifty years ago following the research of Louis and Mary Leakey, there were only a few divisions of pre-historic man. Now there are so many bones and skulls that have been found that there are so many more classifications. So much information to absorb. Just a wonderful, almost
a textbook.
I really admire that Ms. Leakey gave so much credit to all those in the field and their part in the exploration of the land and the finding of remains. One other thing that truly amazed me was the last picture in the book of Meave and husband Richard. I hadn't seen a picture of Richard in many years. Looking at that picture of Richard as an older man, the resemblance to his father, Louis, was so strong that I thought I was looking at Louis.
November 17, 2020
Excellent!!!
July 31, 2021
Book a reading trip with an archeologist. Head for the hot, dry, sediments of Eastern Africa. Meave Leakey takes you under her wing, showing you what she's been up to all these years digging and picking away at layers hiding fossils. Her main interest is human origins but she discovers all sorts of ape like creatures, monkeys, pigs, giraffes, hippos and more. This book is a personal and fascinating story of Meave and her family, past and present as well as a review of a life's work. Enjoyable on many levels, I found it so well written I could hardly tear myself away at the end of chapters. I admit I've met Mary, Meave and Lousie from time to time when we lived in East Africa so I'm blatantly prejudiced towards these hard working scientists. I understand where they are coming from and trying to go. I wish there were more of them. Dig away ladies!
March 28, 2022
Anyone who still believes that all scientists are just in it for the money and are compromised by greed and ambition need to read this memoir. The lives of paleoanthropologists like the Leakey family and Donald Johanson better resemble that of foot soldiers than scientists. They endure incredible hardships and take serious risks to life and limb to uncover and analyze fossils that help us learn about the origin of species and how they have evolved. Meave's husband and professional partner, Richard Leakey, lost both of his legs in a plane crash while working, so the dangers are quite literal. However, the rewards of discovery must make the struggles worthwhile - they have continued to labor in the field for decades. Their contributions to the understanding of human origins are practically immeasurable.
I like the way this book is organized, with Leakey interweaving her professional and personal life together almost seamlessly. We learn about the major discoveries the Leakey team has made through the years while getting a glimpse at what it is like to be one of the world's foremost scientists in this field of study. Nothing about her story is romanticized or embellished, it seems to me. She is completely honest about how stubborn and tenacious Richard is, which she concludes is the reason he is was still alive when she finished this book, having survived a horrible plane crash, two kidney transplants, and a liver transplant. He died in January, 2022, after the book came out in 2021. She shares her own challenges of trying to balance family responsibilities, not the least of which was raising children in a harsh environment, with professional endeavors. It must have all been overwhelming, but she managed. She no doubt has her own share of tenacity somewhere deep in her DNA.
This is by no means a light-weight book, and the sections where Leakey discusses geology, anatomy, and fossils can get a bit thick for lay readers like me. However, she needs to get technical for readers to appreciate the depth and breadth of the research behind the major discoveries in human origins over the last 100 years, and not just human origins. I suppose it never occurred to me how often paleoanthropologists encounter and have to deal with fossils from many different animal species besides homonids. So much has been added to the knowledge base in this area of study since I was teaching and reading about world history back in the 1990s. I don't know how anyone could deny the fact of evolution when presented the mountains of evidence the Leakeys and others have uncovered.
I was interested to know Meave Leakey's perspective on the disagreements between her family's team and the Donald Johanson team through the years, which was rather sensationalized by the press. She claims it was never personal for her, just professional differences. She helps us understand that such differences are an essential element to scientific inquiry, a fact that seems to be lost on so much of the public these days. Instead of focusing on who is right or wrong, the end game is getting at better data to build on for future discovery and broader knowledge, regardless of who gets it right. Yes, money is involved and there can be biases driven by profit, but for the most part, I believe scientists like Meave Leakey are interested in accuracy more than acclaim, in discovery more than dollars. Along with so many others, she has dedicated her life to the search for how our species evolved, and toward the end of this book, she speculates about where it is headed, for better or worse.
I like the way this book is organized, with Leakey interweaving her professional and personal life together almost seamlessly. We learn about the major discoveries the Leakey team has made through the years while getting a glimpse at what it is like to be one of the world's foremost scientists in this field of study. Nothing about her story is romanticized or embellished, it seems to me. She is completely honest about how stubborn and tenacious Richard is, which she concludes is the reason he is was still alive when she finished this book, having survived a horrible plane crash, two kidney transplants, and a liver transplant. He died in January, 2022, after the book came out in 2021. She shares her own challenges of trying to balance family responsibilities, not the least of which was raising children in a harsh environment, with professional endeavors. It must have all been overwhelming, but she managed. She no doubt has her own share of tenacity somewhere deep in her DNA.
This is by no means a light-weight book, and the sections where Leakey discusses geology, anatomy, and fossils can get a bit thick for lay readers like me. However, she needs to get technical for readers to appreciate the depth and breadth of the research behind the major discoveries in human origins over the last 100 years, and not just human origins. I suppose it never occurred to me how often paleoanthropologists encounter and have to deal with fossils from many different animal species besides homonids. So much has been added to the knowledge base in this area of study since I was teaching and reading about world history back in the 1990s. I don't know how anyone could deny the fact of evolution when presented the mountains of evidence the Leakeys and others have uncovered.
I was interested to know Meave Leakey's perspective on the disagreements between her family's team and the Donald Johanson team through the years, which was rather sensationalized by the press. She claims it was never personal for her, just professional differences. She helps us understand that such differences are an essential element to scientific inquiry, a fact that seems to be lost on so much of the public these days. Instead of focusing on who is right or wrong, the end game is getting at better data to build on for future discovery and broader knowledge, regardless of who gets it right. Yes, money is involved and there can be biases driven by profit, but for the most part, I believe scientists like Meave Leakey are interested in accuracy more than acclaim, in discovery more than dollars. Along with so many others, she has dedicated her life to the search for how our species evolved, and toward the end of this book, she speculates about where it is headed, for better or worse.
February 5, 2021
In the late twentieth century, there was an abundance of discoveries of hominin fossils and things related to them. In the 1970s, I was a devoted reader of "National Geographic" magazine and it seemed that almost every month's issue had news of some new discovery, most of them in the Great Rift Valley of Africa. Many of those discoveries were made by members of the Leakey family and their teams of searchers.
The family was led by Louis and Mary Leakey, who themselves had made many of those discoveries. The Leakeys were not only fossil hunters but were also supporters and instigators of much of the research taking place in the area at the time. For example, Louis had been instrumental in starting Jane Goodall in her work with chimpanzees and Dian Fossey with mountain gorillas, work that would consume the two women's lives and, in Fossey's case, cost her her life. In the late 1960s, he also hired a young woman named Meave Epps to head a research project on monkeys.
Meave had been trained as a marine biologist and it was her dream to get a position on a research ship, but she kept being turned down and told that the ships had no facilities for female scientists. And so, when she saw Leakey's ad to head a research facility on monkeys in Kenya, she applied and was hired. It didn't take long, though, for her focus to shift from monkeys to paleoanthropology and hominin fossils.
The impetus for her change in focus was Louis and Mary's son, Richard. Meave fell in love with him when he invited her to join his team and she worked closely with him. As it happened, he was married at the time, but he and his wife later divorced and he and Meave married. From then on, she was fully invested in fossil hunting.
This memoir, which Meave completed with her younger daughter, Samira, has some personal information about her background, her childhood, and education, and the love story with Richard and her life with him, including his several life-threatening illnesses through the years, but the greater part of it deals with the search for fossils and the piecing together of the history of human evolution from the time of the first hominins up through the time of the Neanderthals and Denisovians, and on to modern humans. To anyone, like me, who is interested in this sort of thing, it is fascinating stuff. The writing is very accessible, well-written, and easy to follow, even though it contains a truly mind-boggling wealth of details.
Not all of the fossil discoveries of the period were made by the Leakeys, and Meave gives due recognition to some of the more famous ones, including Lucy perhaps the most famous one of all. This 40% complete skeleton of a female hominin was discovered by American scientist Donald Johanson and his team in Ethiopia in 1974. And in 2007, the fossil was sent on a tour of America, a very controversial decision because of the fragility of the skeleton. Lucy's first stop in America was at the Museum of Natural Science in Houston and my family and I were right there to visit her. Viewing those 3.2 million-year-old bones was almost a religious experience for me. I felt like weeping. I can truly understand how the search for these fossils consumes people's lives.
This is recommended reading for anyone interested in human prehistory and in paleontology or in the exploits of the Leakey family. I certainly enjoyed it.
The family was led by Louis and Mary Leakey, who themselves had made many of those discoveries. The Leakeys were not only fossil hunters but were also supporters and instigators of much of the research taking place in the area at the time. For example, Louis had been instrumental in starting Jane Goodall in her work with chimpanzees and Dian Fossey with mountain gorillas, work that would consume the two women's lives and, in Fossey's case, cost her her life. In the late 1960s, he also hired a young woman named Meave Epps to head a research project on monkeys.
Meave had been trained as a marine biologist and it was her dream to get a position on a research ship, but she kept being turned down and told that the ships had no facilities for female scientists. And so, when she saw Leakey's ad to head a research facility on monkeys in Kenya, she applied and was hired. It didn't take long, though, for her focus to shift from monkeys to paleoanthropology and hominin fossils.
The impetus for her change in focus was Louis and Mary's son, Richard. Meave fell in love with him when he invited her to join his team and she worked closely with him. As it happened, he was married at the time, but he and his wife later divorced and he and Meave married. From then on, she was fully invested in fossil hunting.
This memoir, which Meave completed with her younger daughter, Samira, has some personal information about her background, her childhood, and education, and the love story with Richard and her life with him, including his several life-threatening illnesses through the years, but the greater part of it deals with the search for fossils and the piecing together of the history of human evolution from the time of the first hominins up through the time of the Neanderthals and Denisovians, and on to modern humans. To anyone, like me, who is interested in this sort of thing, it is fascinating stuff. The writing is very accessible, well-written, and easy to follow, even though it contains a truly mind-boggling wealth of details.
Not all of the fossil discoveries of the period were made by the Leakeys, and Meave gives due recognition to some of the more famous ones, including Lucy perhaps the most famous one of all. This 40% complete skeleton of a female hominin was discovered by American scientist Donald Johanson and his team in Ethiopia in 1974. And in 2007, the fossil was sent on a tour of America, a very controversial decision because of the fragility of the skeleton. Lucy's first stop in America was at the Museum of Natural Science in Houston and my family and I were right there to visit her. Viewing those 3.2 million-year-old bones was almost a religious experience for me. I felt like weeping. I can truly understand how the search for these fossils consumes people's lives.
This is recommended reading for anyone interested in human prehistory and in paleontology or in the exploits of the Leakey family. I certainly enjoyed it.
May 17, 2023
I listened to this on audio, and I’ll admit it was somewhat of a stretch for me—I’m not especially science-minded. Still I found this interesting, even if my attention tended to drift at times. Born in England during the second World War, Leakey has spent over 50 years working in the field of paleontology, working to understand the origins of humanity. From what I understood, she had intended to be a marine biologist, but on graduating college was told that she couldn’t be hired because the ships didn’t have the “facilities” for a woman. So she started out working with primates, and that led to paleontology. She also met her husband, Richard Leakey, who was not only a paleontologist, but the son of two paleontologists.
The memoir is a mix of personal and professional experiences, and parts of it are more broadly accessible than others. There were a number of interesting insights. Early on, she notes that while Richard was finding tons of fossilized bones, she was hardly spotting any. He explained that you have to know what every bone in the skeleton of various species looks like, be able to picture it in your mind, in order to spot it. It was also surprising how often an important fossil would just be lying out in the open, exposed by the wear of weather.
She delves into the different species of early man, though I didn’t really follow how they’re all connected—whether they were all separate species, or a progression (I think the former). One of the more interesting was homo floresiensis, discovered in 2003, that lived isolated on an island and was nicknamed “Hobbit” due to its petite stature and oversized feet. Another interesting point she made that while we assume humans thrived and became dominant because of their larger brains (relative brain size corresponding with intelligence), their brains were actually small early on and developed later. It was that humans have the endurance to run for longer than their prey, and can withstand heat better. A deer may be faster, but only for short periods, and humans would hunt at the hottest time of the day, when animals would overheat.
Overall, this was an interesting book to listen to, even if it lost me or went over my head at times.
The memoir is a mix of personal and professional experiences, and parts of it are more broadly accessible than others. There were a number of interesting insights. Early on, she notes that while Richard was finding tons of fossilized bones, she was hardly spotting any. He explained that you have to know what every bone in the skeleton of various species looks like, be able to picture it in your mind, in order to spot it. It was also surprising how often an important fossil would just be lying out in the open, exposed by the wear of weather.
She delves into the different species of early man, though I didn’t really follow how they’re all connected—whether they were all separate species, or a progression (I think the former). One of the more interesting was homo floresiensis, discovered in 2003, that lived isolated on an island and was nicknamed “Hobbit” due to its petite stature and oversized feet. Another interesting point she made that while we assume humans thrived and became dominant because of their larger brains (relative brain size corresponding with intelligence), their brains were actually small early on and developed later. It was that humans have the endurance to run for longer than their prey, and can withstand heat better. A deer may be faster, but only for short periods, and humans would hunt at the hottest time of the day, when animals would overheat.
Overall, this was an interesting book to listen to, even if it lost me or went over my head at times.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews