Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 8, 1995 TAG: 9510100012
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: F-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY LARRY SHIELD
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Biography has become one of the interesting ways to learn science.
In "Genius," James Gleick investigated the eccentric personality of Richard Feynman and, in passing, gave a credible introduction to quantum mechanics. In "Darwin," Adrian Desmond and James Moore chronicled the emotional and theological price Charles Darwin paid for his development of evolutionary theory, the same pain his theories exact today.
"Ancestral Passions" continues this informative tradition.
This well-written, well-annotated biography of Louis Leakey and his family describes the growth of paleoanthropology - the science which merges anthropology, the study of man, with paleontology, the study of fossils.
This extraordinary family invented the science.
Three major figures are discussed - Louis, his second wife, Mary, and their second son, Richard. Of the three, Louis was the showman, Mary was the consummate scientist and Richard was the restless seeker of recognition outside the reflected glow of his parents. Louis and Mary are described in parallel as their professional lives were lived (Louis died in 1972). Richard's diverse life is chronicled to the point where he stopped exploring for fossils and began his well-publicized crusade against poaching on Kenyan wildlife reserves.
The most fascinating character in this triumvirate was patriarch Louis. Part scientist, part showman, part rake, Louis single-handedly moved the dawn of man back from 600,000 years when he first started collecting fossils to 2.5 million years at his death.
Leakey was born in Kenya to missionary parents. He was able to use his Kenyan citizenship throughout his life to control access to rich fossil sites in most of eastern Africa. Educated at Cambridge as an archeologist, he returned to Africa to trace the origins of man. He was immediately successful in discovering several fossils that pushed back the dates of man's evolution, but the showman side of his personality allowed him to promulgate theories of evolution that could not be verified.
Thought of as a charlatan, he was shunned by the English science establishment. Not satisfied with just professional disgrace, Louis also decided to court personal disgrace. Married with children, Louis began a very public affair with a student 10 years his junior. The public scandal led Louis' first wife to divorce him using adultery as grounds. Freed from his first marriage, Louis married the student.
Beginning in scandal, this marriage to Mary Nicol paired Leakey with a first-rate scientist freeing him to work the public relations side of science. He never looked back. Primarily using Mary's work, Louis regained his scientific reputation. Unique to his time, Louis wasn't satisfied with just finding where early man lived. He wanted to know how early man lived.
He sponsored scientific studies on the social habits of chimpanzees and gorillas. He used the stone tools he found to butcher small game. He was the first to realize that early man was not a hunter competing with the great cats for food but a scavenger competing with hyenas for food. He once asked Richard to please eat an entire rat so he could compare his - well, the polite scientific term is fecolith - with those he found fossilized at Olduvai. Richard declined.
Mary Nicol Leakey was a superb field anthropologist who spent 50 years digging and documenting the finds that Louis trumpeted to the world. She was a quiet, unassuming woman who was happiest when she was working at the famous Olduvai gorge site in Tanganyika. She allowed Louis to take the public plaudits for her work, satisfied that his Barnum-like personality brought in sufficient funds to continue the digs.
She knew of Louis' philandering (among his conquests was Dian Fosse of mountain gorilla fame, and the mother of Jane Goodall, resident guru of the Gombe River chimpanzee refuge) but chose to ignore it. Over the years, the scientific community realized that it was Mary Leakey who provided the fodder for Louis to concoct the superb public relations efforts he used to pry funds from English and American foundations.
After Louis' death, Mary received the public acclaim her work deserved.
While his father lived, Richard was in constant competition with him. While he never finished college, Richard was able to use the Leakey name to lever grants to fund several important digs in Kenya, Tanganyika and Ethiopia. During these digs, he found several key fossils which pushed earliest man back to 3.5 million years.
Morell reverts to an older form on annotation which I really enjoyed. It has become popular to place all secondary comments and references at the back of books. I suppose it makes the book easier to typeset and print. In this book, footnotes are at the bottom of the page, allowing the reader to go to these interesting asides without losing narrative flow. I hope this archaic form from my lost youth regains favor. Constantly flipping to the back of a book for notes guarantees that most notes will not be read.
With this book, not reading the notes would be criminal.
Larry Shield trains dogs and horses in Franklin County.
by CNB