Mary Douglas Leakey (1913-1996) was a major figure in the uncovering of East African prehistory, best known for her excavations of some of the earliest members of the human family, their footprints, and their artifacts.

Mary Douglas Leakey was born in London on February 6, 1913. She was the only child of Erskine Nicol, a landscape painter, and Cecilia (nee Frere). Much of her childhood was spent traveling abroad with her parents except during World War I when her family spent the time in England. At the house of her maternal aunts and grandmother in London she was first introduced to dogs, marking the beginning of her strong affection for animals, an important personal component of her life. After the war, Mary's family resumed their annual cycle of continental travel, followed by a return to London in summer to sell the paintings that her father produced on their travels.

Mary's early education was largely informal, although she did attend school in France for a short time. Her father taught her to read and some mathematics, and he also inspired her interest in the natural world and in archaeology. While living in the Dordogne region in France, Mary was exposed to Paleolithic archaeology which, combined with her artistic talents, formed the basis of her career. Her father died in France in 1926. Mary and her mother returned to England, where she unhappily attended several convent schools. Between 1930 and 1934, she took part in excavations at Hembury, Devon, and attended lectures in geology and archaeology at London University and the London Museum. She also began drawing stone tools for publication. She was introduced to Louis Leakey as a potential artist for his book Adam's Ancestors and was hired. They were married in 1936 and had three children, Jonathan, Richard, and Philip.

Mary moved to Kenya with Louis and worked with him in East Africa for much of her career. She introduced modern archaeological techniques to East Africa. Her initial East African excavations were the Late Stone Age sites at Hyrax Hill and Njoro River Cave, and she was the first person to describe the important dimple based pottery from East Africa. She also worked at a number of other sites, including Olorgesailie, which was famous for its abundance of middle Pleistocene Acheulean hand-axes. She also worked with Louis on several East African Miocene ape sites, and she was instrumental in the recovery of many fossil ape remains. In 1951 she studied and recorded the beautiful Late Pleistocene Tanzanian rock paintings that years later formed the basis of her book Africa's Vanishing Art. Although she is best known for her association with human fossil sites, she considered her work on the rock paintings one of the highlights of her career.

In spite of her primary interest in art and artifacts, Mary Leakey is best known for her exceptional ability to find fossils and for her excavations at two of the most famous hominid fossil sites in East Africa - Olduvai Gorge and Laetoli, both in Tanzania. Beginning in 1960, she established a permanent base camp at Olduvai Gorge from which she directed excavations. The previous year she had discovered the first hominid specimen from that site, "Zinjanthropus boisei," whom she and Louis nicknamed the "nutcracker man" because of its huge jaws and molar teeth. "Zinj" is now recognized as the type specimen of Australopithecus boisei, an extinct side branch of the genus Homo. She soon found another hominid more closely related to modern humans, Homo habilis or "Handy Man," providing evidence of contemporary hominid groups one to two million years ago in East Africa. Leakey's research at Olduvai lasted over 20 years and in spite of many fossil finds focused mainly on the specific descriptions of the archaeology. She initially detailed the archaeology of Beds 1 and 2 and later, more recent levels, contributing greatly to the understanding of Plio-Pleistocene lifeways.

In 1974 she began systematic excavations at Laetoli, which produced australopithecine skeletal remains the same year. Two years later, the first of several sets of bipedal hominid footprints were discovered at the site, corroborating skeletal evidence for bipedalism at a very early date. The footprints were made as australopithecines walked, in at least one case together, through an ash fall from a nearby volcano. These finds caught the attention of the world as they "humanized" the discoveries of our distant relatives. Like many East African early hominid sites, Laetoli was well dated radiometrically and provided evidence that full bipedal locomotion, a major human hallmark, was achieved by 3.75 million years. While she never accepted the allocation of the Laetoli hominids to Australopithecus afarensis, she recognized them as the earliest definitive hominid sample known at the time. Laetoli yielded a number of skeletal elements of Pliocene australopithecines, but ironically, given Leakey's primary interest, no stone artifacts were ever found in these early beds.

In addition to her research, Mary Leakey found herself assuming many of Louis' more public roles after she was widowed in 1972. She spent considerable time traveling to give lectures, raise funds, and receive many honors from institutions around the world. Although she always considered herself primarily an archaeologist and her professional life was of utmost important to her, she remained involved with her family and was very close to her children and grandchildren. In 1983 she retired to Nairobi to be nearer to her family. There, she continued to work on her manuscripts until her death in December of 1996.

Biography

The artist's daughter

Mary Leakey was born Mary Douglas Nicol on February 6, 1913 in London, England to Erskine Nicol and Cecilia Frere Nicol. Since Erskine worked as a painter, specializing in watercolor landscapes, the Nicol family would move from place to place, visiting numerous locations in France, Italy and Egypt, where Erskine painted scenes to be sold in England.

The Nicols spent much of their time in southern France. Mary became fluent in French. She identified more with the adventurous spirit of her father, going for long walks and explorations with him and having long talks. She disliked her governess and had less sympathy for her mother.

In 1925 when she was 12, the Nicols were staying Les Eyzies when Elie Peyrony was excavating one of the caves there. Peyrony did not understand the significance of much of what he found and was not digging scientifically at that early stage of archaeology. Mary received permission to go through his dump. It was here that her interest in prehistory was sparked. She started a collection of points, scrapers and blades from the dump and developed her first system of classification.^[1]

That winter, the family moved to Cabrerets, a village of Dordogne, France. There she met Abbe Lemozi, the village priest, who befriended her and became for a time her mentor. The two discussed theology, toured Pêche Merle Cave to view the prehistoric paintings of bisons and horses, and apparently did some excavation, as she credits him with teaching her the art. She walked also with her father along the Sagne River.

Escape into prehistory

In the spring of 1926, in Mary's 13th year, her father died of cancer. The services were read by Lemozi. Erskine's brother Percy came to take them back to London. Cecilia sold Erskine's paintings and moved to a boardinghouse in Kensington. She placed Mary in a Catholic convent there to be educated, following the example of her own life. However, Mary's relationship to the nuns became confrontative. Later she boasted of never passing an examination there.^[2] She was expelled temporarily for refusing to recite poetry and then permanently for causing an explosion in a chemistry laboratory.^[1]

In the last months with her father she had developed a passion for prehistory, which she could not now forget. In 1930, at age 17, she attended lectures for archaeology and geology at University College London and the London Museum and applied to a number of excavations to be held in the summer. She found one at Hembury, a Neolithic site, under Dorothy Liddell, who coached her along for four years. Her illustrations of tools for Dorothy drew the attention of Gertrude Caton-Thompson. She entered the field as an illustrator for Caton-Thompson's book, The Desert Fayoum.

Matriarch

Through Gertrude Mary met Louis Leakey, who was in need of an illustrator for his book, Adam's Ancestors. While she was doing that work they became romantically attached. Louis was already married, but love in this case conquered all. They also shared common interests and values: a love of freedom and dislike for rules, an egalitarian frame of mind extending even to animals, a desire for adventure and a passion for archaeology. They moved in together causing a scandal that ruined Louis' career at Cambridge University and were married when Louis' wife Frida divorced him in 1936.

From then until about 1962 Louis and Mary remained soul-mates through the most trying physical hardships. Early in their career he nursed her through double pneumonia, staying up with her night after night. They had three sons: Jonathan in 1940, Richard in 1944, and Philip in 1949. The boys received much of their early childhood care at various anthropological sites. Whenever possible the Leakeys excavated and explored as a family. The boys grew up with the same love of freedom their parents had. Mary would not even allow guests to shoo away the pet hyraxes that helped themselves to food and drink at the dinner table. She smoked incessantly, first cigarettes and then cigars, and dressed as though on excavation.

Louis was not always faithful to Mary, as he had not been to Frida. In 1960 they agreed that Mary should become director of excavations at Olduvai. From then on she operated more or less independently, taking over the dig. After Vanne Goodall and Louis formed a romantic attachment in 1962 the intimate side of the marriage was effectively over. Louis went from Vanne to Dian Fossey, but the old charm was gone. He ended by earning the opprobrium of almost all the women in his life, including Mary. Vanne Goodall and Rosalie Osborn loved him to the end, but they were a sore topic to Mary. Her life consisted mainly of her children, her dogs and her archaeology. Louis died on October 1, 1972 of a heart attack, and Mary, already apart for some years, went on.

For more details on this topic, see Louis Leakey.

Floruit

Mary carried on after Louis, becoming a powerful and respected figure. By then Richard had decided to become a palaeoanthropologist. She helped his career significantly. The other two boys had opted to follow other interests.

Passing

Mary died on December 9, 1996 at the age of 83, a renowned palaeoanthropologist, who had not only conducted significant research of her own, but had been invaluable to the research careers of her husband and their son Richard. There have been few who did not acclaim her as a remarkable woman.

Excavations

Mary served her apprenticeship in archaeology under Dorothy Liddell at Hembury in Devon, England, 1930-1934, for whom she also did illustrations.

The years 1935 to 1959, spent at Olduvai Gorge in the Serengeti plains of Northern Tanzania, yielded many stone tools from primitive stone-chopping instruments to multi-purpose hand axes. These finds came from Stone Age cultures dated as far back as 100,000 to two million years ago.

The Leakeys unearthed a Proconsul africanus skull on Rusinga Island, in October of 1947. This skull was the first skull of a fossil ape ever to be found and to this day only three of these apes are known.

Their next discovery, in 1959, was a 1.75 million-year-old Australopithecus boisei skull. They also found a less robust Homo habilis skull and bones of a hand. After reconstructing the hand, it was proven the hand was capable of precise manipulation. Many more remains were found at this site. In 1965 the husband and wife team uncovered a Homo erectus skull, dated at one million years old.

After Mary's husband passed on, she continued her work at Olduvai and Laetoli. It was here at the Laetoli site, that she discovered Homo fossils that were more than 3.75 million-years-old. She also discovered fifteen new species and one new genus.

From 1976 to 1981 Mary and her staff worked to uncover the Laetoli hominid footprint trail which was left in volcanic ashes some 3.6 million years ago. The years that followed this discovery were filled with research at Olduvai and Laetoli, the follow-up work to discoveries and preparing publications.

Books

Excavations at Njoro River Cave, 1950, with Louis.
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

Notes

^ ^a ^b Virginia Morell, Ancestral Passions, Copyright 1996, Chapter 4, "Louis and Mary."
^ Mary Leakey, archaeologist and anthropologist, obituary from The Times, December 10, 1996, displayed at the Primate Info Net, University of Wisconsin.

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		Scientist. A Dictionary of Scientists. Copyright © Market House Books Ltd 1993, 1999, 2003. All rights reserved. Read more
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		Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more
		Science Dictionary. The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Edited by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil. Copyright © 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved. Read more
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