Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey (7 August 1903 – 1 October 1972) was a Kenyan-British palaeoanthropologist and archaeologist whose work was important in demonstrating that humans evolved in Africa, particularly through discoveries made at Olduvai Gorge with his wife, fellow palaeoanthropologist Mary Leakey. Having established a programme of palaeoanthropological inquiry in eastern Africa, he also motivated many future generations to continue this scholarly work. Several members of the Leakey family became prominent scholars themselves.
Another of Leakey's legacies stems from his role in fostering field research of primates in their natural habitats, which he saw as key to understanding human evolution. He personally focused on three female researchers, Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birutė Galdikas, calling them "The Trimates." Each went on to become an important scholar in the field of primatology. Leakey also encouraged and supported many other PhD candidates, most notably from the University of Cambridge. As well, Leakey played a role in creating organisations for future research in Africa and for protecting wildlife there.
When I think back... of the serval cat and a baboon that I had as pets in my childhood days—and that eventually I had to house in large cages—it makes me sad. It makes me sadder still, however, and also very angry, when I think of the innumerable adult animals and birds deliberately caught and locked up for the so-called 'pleasure' and 'education' of thoughtless human beings.
Leakey's parents, Harry (1868–1940) and Mary (May) Bazett Leakey (died 1948), were Church of England missionaries in British East Africa. Harry was the son of James Shirley Leakey (1824–1871), one of the eleven children of the portrait painter James Leakey. Harry Leakey was assigned to an established post of the Church Mission Society among the Kikuyu at Kabete, in the highlands north of Nairobi. The station was at that time a hut and two tents. Leakey's 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 over time. The mission, a centre of activity, set up a clinic in one of the tents, and later a girls' school. Harry was working on a translation of the Bible into the Gikuyu language. He had a distinguished career in the CMS, becoming canon of the station.
Leakey had a younger brother, Douglas, and two elder sisters, Gladys and Julia. Both sisters married missionaries: Gladys married Leonard Beecher, Anglican Bishop of Mombasa and then Archbishop of East Africa from 1960 to 1970; Julia married Lawrence Barham, the second Bishop of Rwanda and Burundi from 1964 to 1966; their son Ken Barham was later the Bishop of Cyangugu in Rwanda.
The Leakey household came to contain Miss Oakes (a governess), Miss Higgenbotham (another missionary), and Mariamu (a Kikuyu nurse). Leakey grew up, played, and learned to hunt with the native Kikuyus. He also learned to walk with the distinctive gait of the Kikuyu and speak their language fluently, as did his siblings. He was initiated into the Kikuyu ethnic group, an event of which he never spoke, as he was sworn to secrecy.
Leakey requested and was given permission to build and move into a Kikuyu-style hut at the end of the garden. It was home to his personal collection of natural objects, such as birds' eggs and skulls. All the children developed a keen interest in and appreciation of the pristine natural surroundings in which they found themselves. They raised baby animals, later turning them over to zoos. Leakey read a gift book, Days Before History, by H. R. Hall (1907), a juvenile fictional work illustrating the prehistory of Britain. He began to collect tools and was further encouraged in this activity by a role model, Arthur Loveridge, the first curator (1914) of the Natural History Museum in Nairobi, the predecessor of the Coryndon Museum. This interest may have predisposed him toward a career in archaeology. His father was also a role model: Canon Leakey co-founded East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society.
Neither Harry nor May was of strong constitution. From 1904 to 1906 the entire family lived back in England, at May's mother's house in Reading, Berkshire, while Harry recovered from neurasthenia, and again in 1911–1913, while May recovered from general frailty and exhaustion. During the latter stay, Harry bought a house in Boscombe, Hampshire.
In Britain, the Leakey children attended primary school; in Africa, they had a tutor. The family spent World War I in Africa. When the sea lanes opened again in 1919, they returned to Boscombe, and Leakey was sent to Weymouth College, a private boys' school, when he was 16 years old. He did not do well and, in about three years, complained of bullying and rules that he considered an infringement on his freedom. Advised by one teacher to seek employment in a bank, he secured help from an English teacher in applying to St John's College, Cambridge. He received a scholarship for his high scores on the entrance exams.
Leakey thus matriculated at the University of Cambridge, his father's alma mater, in 1922, intending to become a missionary to British East Africa. The resourceful Leakey convinced Cambridge authorities to accept Kikuyu for a modern language requirement, which led to the tall tale that he had "examined himself" in the language.
Archaeological and palaeontological research
In 1922, the British had been awarded German East Africa as part of the settlement of World War I. Within the Tanganyika Territory the Germans had discovered a site rich in dinosaur fossils, Tendaguru. Leakey was told by C. W. Hobley, a friend of the family, that the British Museum of Natural History was going to send a fossil-hunting expedition led by William E. Cutler to the site. Leakey applied and was hired to locate the site and manage the administrative details. In 1924 they departed for Africa. They never found a complete dinosaur skeleton, and Leakey was recalled from the site by Cambridge in 1925.
Leakey switched his focus to anthropology, and found a new mentor in Alfred Cort Haddon, head of the Cambridge department. In 1926, Leakey graduated with a "double first", one of the highest degree results awarded, in archaeology and anthropology. He had used some of his preexisting qualifications; for example, Kikuyu was offered and accepted as the second modern language in which he was required to be proficient, even though no one there could test him on it. The university accepted an affidavit from a Kikuyu chief signed with a thumbprint.
From 1925 on Leakey 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 artefacts. Some of his names for archaeological cultures are still in use; for example, the Elmenteitan.
In 1927, Leakey received a visit at a site called Gamble's Cave, near Lake Elmenteita, by two women on a holiday, one of whom was Frida Avern (1902–1993). Avern had done some coursework in archaeology. Leakey and Frida began a relationship, which continued upon his return to Cambridge. In 1928, they married and continued work near Lake Elmenteita. Finds from Gamble's Cave were donated by Leakey to the British Museum in 1931. At that time he discovered the Acheulean site of Kariandusi, which he excavated in 1928.
On the strength of his work there, he obtained a post-graduate research fellowship at St. John's College and returned to Cambridge in 1929 to classify and prepare the finds from Elmenteita. His patron and mentor at Cambridge was now Arthur Keith. While cleaning two skeletons he had found, he noticed a similarity to one found in Olduvai Gorge by Professor Hans Reck, a German national, whom Leakey had met in 1925 in Germany while on business for Keith.
The geology of Olduvai was known. In 1913, Reck had extricated a skeleton from Bed II in the gorge wall. He argued that it must have the date of the bed, which was believed to be 600,000 years, in the mid-Pleistocene. Early dates for human evolution were not widely accepted at the time, and Reck became involved in a media uproar. He was barred from going back to settle the question by the war and then the terms of the transfer of Tanganyika from Germany to Britain. In 1929, Leakey visited Berlin to talk to the now sceptical Reck. Noting an Acheulean tool in Reck's collection of artefacts from Olduvai, he bet Reck he could find ancient stone tools at Olduvai within 24 hours.