Louis Leakey, self-styled White African: Appreciation and some personal recollections

Abstract

One hundred years after the birth of L.S.B. Leakey, it is fitting to pay tribute to one who did more than anyone else to unravel the story of humanity's past in Africa. This brief biographical sketch and personal appreciation shows how the pattern of his life was established even while he was an undergraduate at Cambridge, through his leadership of a series of expeditions to East Africa (his birthplace). His role in laying bare the prehistory of East Africa and in setting up the first outline of the archaeological sequence is briefly recounted, as are some of the genera and species of hominids which he and his wife Mary discovered. Leakey's recognition of earlier climatic changes in Africa is described including his—later discredited—delineation of four so-called pluvials, separated by interpluvials, which he considered to parallel the glacial and interglacial periods of Europe. Louis Leakey's deep involvement with the living peoples of East Africa is illustrated by his studies on the Kikuyu people. Some of the many difficulties with which he had to contend throughout his life are shown to provide the background to his career of struggle and of accomplishments wrested from a life of poverty and pain. Reference is made to the powerful impact which Dr Leakey had upon the life and career of the writer.