to the southern hemisphere, and to the development of world archaeology and prehistory.

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Louis and Mary Leakey excavating in Tanganyika, 1961

(Bettmann/Corbis)

In addition to the Olduvai material, Louis Leakey’s work on the Miocene fauna of western Kenya and the early hominid remains from Rusinga Island, Songhor, and Fort Ternan were great contributions to African prehistory. He spoke Kikuyu fluently and his 1937 to 1939 detailed study of the people and their culture was published in 1977 by his wife. Louis Leakey became curator of the Coryndon Museum in Nairobi in 1940, and he established the Centre for Prehistory and Paleontology in 1962, which became the International Louis Leakey Memorial Institute for African Prehistory after his death.

Tim Murray

See also

Dart, Raymond Arthur; Africa, East, Prehistory; Africa, South, Prehistory; Laetoli

References

Isaac, G., and E.R. McCown, eds. 1976. Human Origins: Louis Leakey and the East African Evidence. Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin.

Leakey, Mary Douglas

(1913– )

Mary Leakey is the daughter of the landscape painter Erskine E. Nichol and the great-great-great-granddaughter of john frere, the antiquarian squire who argued for the antiquity and human origins of stone tools at the end of the eighteenth century. Mary Douglas Nichol had an informal education and was a talented artist with an interest in archaeology. She illustrated gertrude caton-thompson’s book The Desert Fayum (1934), and, impressed by her talents, louis leakey asked her to illustrate his popular book on prehistory, Adam’s Ancestors (1934). They were married in 1936 and worked together in East Africa for more than thirty years.

Before 1972 it is almost impossible to separate Mary’s contributions to East African archaeology from Louis’s—they were an archaeological field team. Mary was there at Rusinga, olduvai, and olorgesailie, and she contributed to and wrote many of the scholarly publications on their work. She seems to have left the publicity, funding, and the big-picture debates to Louis and to have preferred to continue