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Louis Leakey

Louis Leakey was a Kenyan archaeologist and naturalist whose work was important in establishing human evolutionary development in Africa. He also played a major role in creating organizations for future research in Africa and for protecting wildlife there. Having been a prime mover in establishing a tradition of palaeoanthropological inquiry, he was able to motivate the next generation to continue it, notably within his own family, many of whom also became prominent.

Being Beneath the Dirt

Leakey’s parents were British missionaries of the Christian faith in then British East Africa, now Kenya. Young Louis’ earliest home had an earthen floor, a leaky thatched roof, rodents and insects, and no heating system except for charcoal braziers. The facilities slowly improved, and what began as a hut and two tents eventually became a center of activity with a clinic in one of the tents, and later a girl’s school for African women. Leakey grew up, played, and learned to hunt with Africans. He learned to speak their language fluently.

In his childhood, Leakey requested and was given permission to build and move into a hut, which became home to his personal collection of natural objects, such as birds’ eggs and skulls. He developed a keen interest in and appreciation of the pristine natural surroundings in which he found himself. He raised baby animals, later turning them over to zoos. His thirst for scientific observation was somewhat suppressed at age 16, however, when his family returned to Britain. He attended a private boy’s school there for three years and he did not do well; he complained of rules he considered an infringement on his freedom.

Branching Out Roots for Balance

He attended Cambridge University on an academic scholarship, and in 1926 he graduated with high honors in anthropology and archaeology. From 1925 on, Louis lectured and wrote on African archaeological and palaeontological topics. On graduation he was such a respected figure that Cambridge sent him to East Africa to study prehistoric African humans. He excavated dozens of sites, undertaking for the first time a systematic study of the artifacts.

On the strength of his work there he and elsewhere, he obtained a research fellowship at St. John’s College and returned to Cambridge in 1929 to do post-graduate work. Leakey was given the Ph.D. in 1930 at age 27. Leakey led fossil-finding expeditions, continuing to investigate the stone age culture in East Africa. His wife accompanied him during the archaeological studies, as the illustrator for his book, The Stone Age Culture of Kenya Colony. Sick with the couple’s second child on the way, she was unable to complete the illustrations for his second book, Adam’s Ancestors, and Louis convinced another woman, Mary Nicol, to take on the illustration of his book. Leakey’s companionship with the replacement illustrator turned to romance. A month after his second child was born, Leakey asked his wife for a divorce.

Leakey’s good fortune turned as a panel at Cambridge investigated his morals. Grants dried up, coinciding with the questioning of Leakey’s work by a man named P. G. H. Boswell. Leakey invited Boswell to see the sites for himself, and when Boswell arrived, they found that the iron markers Louis had used to mark the sites had been removed by the Luo tribe for use as harpoons and the sites could not now be located. To make matters worse, all the photos Leakey took were ruined by a light leak in the camera. After an irritating and fruitless two-month search, Boswell left for England and immediately published articles that destroyed Leakey’s findings and questioned his competence.

Rising like a Surfacing Stem

Louis and Mary found themselves returning to England in 1935 without positions or any place to stay except Mary’s mother’s apartment. They soon leased a cottage and lived without heat, electricity, or plumbing, fetching water from a well, huddling before a fireplace and writing by oil lantern. They lived happily in poverty for eighteen months at this low point of their fortunes, visited at first only by Mary’s relatives. Leakey gardened for subsistence and exercise. He appealed at last to the Royal Society, who relented with a small grant to continue work on his collection.

Leakey was given a grant in 1936 to write a study of the Kikuyu, the tribe he had grown up with. On a meager two-year salary, he fulfilled the obligations of his position while also partially using grant partially for fossil-hunting. Leakey discoveries began to appear in the newspapers again. When Britain went to war in September, 1939, the Kenyan government drafted Louis into its African intelligence service. His primary task was to supply and arm Ethiopian guerrillas against the Italian invaders of their country. He created a clandestine network using his childhood friends among the Kikuyu. They also hunted fossils on the sly.

Mary continued to find and excavate sites, and their life together became a menage of police work and archaeology. She worked in the Coryndon Memorial Museum (later called the National Museums of Kenya) where Leakey joined her as an unpaid honorary curator in 1941. Meanwhile, Leakey conducted interrogations, analyzed handwriting, wrote radio broadcasts and took on regular police investigations. The white leadership of the King’s African Rifles used him extensively to clear up many cultural mysteries; for example, he helped an officer remove a curse he had inadvertently put on his men.

Reaching Fruition

In January, 1947, Leakey conducted the first Pan-African Congress of Prehistory at Nairobi. Sixty scientists from 26 countries attended, delivering papers and visiting the Leakey sites. The conference restored Louis to the scientific fold and made him a major figure in it. With the money that now poured in Louis undertook the famous expeditions of 1948 and beyond at Rusinga Island in Lake Victoria, where Mary discovered the most complete Proconsul fossil up to that time.

While the Leakeys were at Lake Victoria, the Kikuyu struck at the European settlers of the Kenyan highlands, who seemed to have the upper hand and were insisting on a “white” government of a “white” Africa. Approximately 1 million Kikuyu were being harassed by about 32,000 settlers. In 1949 the Kikuyu formed a secret society, the Mau Mau, which attacked settlers and especially loyalist Kikuyu. During this period his life was threatened and a reward placed on his head. The Leakeys began to pack pistols, termed “European National Dress.” The government placed him under 24-hour guard.

Leakey played the difficult and contradictory role of serving as the settlers’ spokesman and intelligence officer, helping to ferret out bands of guerillas, while at the same time continuing to advocate for the Kikuyu in his book, Defeating Mau Mau and numerous talks and articles. He recommended a multi-racial government, land reform in the highlands, a wage hike for the Kikuyu, and many other reforms, most of which were eventually adopted. Following Leakey’s suggestion, thousands of Kikuyu were placed in re-education camps and resettled in new villages. The state of emergency lasted until 1960. In 1963 Kenya became independent.

Leaving a Legacy

One of Louis Leakey’s greatest legacies stems from his role in fostering field research of primates in their natural habitats, which he understood as key to unraveling the mysteries of human evolution. He personally chose three female researchers, Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas, who were later dubbed ‘Leakey’s Angels’ and each went on to become important scholars in the field of primatology, studying chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, respectively.

During his final years Leakey became famous as a lecturer in the United States and United Kingdom. He brought audiences cheering to their feet. He did not personally excavate any longer, as he was crippled with arthritis, for which he had a hip replacement in 1968. He raised funds and directed his family and associates. In Kenya he was an indispensable facilitator for the hundreds of scientists then exploring the East African Rift system for fossils.

Disclaimer: Mud Puds bios are derived from widely-accepted “truths,” as shared in the Public Domain. In the absence of first-hand accounts, information is presented as: “Factual, as far as we know.”