ML148455
People
- Age
- Not specified
- Sex
- Not specified
- Playback
- Not specified
Media notes
Subject 1: (Interview). Subtitle: Meave Leakey. Timecode In: 00:00:04. Timecode out: 00:23:29. Notes: Paleontology; Paleoanthropology; Leakey family. Subject 2: (Interview). Subtitle: Cheryl Knott. Timecode In: 00:24:15. Timecode out: 00:44:05. Notes: Leakey family; Dian Fossey; Jane Goodall; Primatology; Orangutans. Equipment Notes: Split-Track recording. Note: no record of absolute time on DAT machine; the following are ¿timeless' interviews. Donald Smith [DS] You must be very proud of Louise. Meave Leakey [ML] I am proud of Louise. It's so nice to have a daughter whose doing something I'm interested in. And to work with her is really fun. DS And she's following the family tradition? ML She is, finally. It took her a long time to decide. She didn't want to. I think she was worried that she would feel she was forced into it because everyone would assume that she would do that, so she took a few years off to make sure she really did want to do it. And now she's fully committed, and so it's really good. DS And so it's going to be a dynasty for sure? ML Well, who knows? She's the third generation now. It's Louis and Mary, Richard, and Louise. DS I'm going to ask you to pretend I don't know anything about anything and that'll get us off to a safe start. Tell me, what is Olduvai Gorge, what does it look like? ML Olduvai Gorge in the Serengeti Plain. If you look at it from the air you can see that it's just a big gorge running through the Serengeti. If you look at it on foot, you can't really see it's there until you're right on the edge of it. There's a story about the man who originally discovered or rather wrote about it and the story goes that he was collecting butterflies, and he was running after these butterflies with his net and then he fell down the gorge because he couldn't see it. But I don't think it was quite like that but in any event, you don't really know it's there until you get quite close to it. So it's a very flat plain¿covered in animals and completely flat and then there's this gorge that cuts through it. Very dramatic¿It's like a geology textbook situation where you can see every bed, one on top of the other. So you start at the bottom with the lava, and then you go through bed 1 and then bed 3¿it's a classic one on top of the other situation with the sediments, you can see how the sediments were laid down. DS Is it like the Grand Canyon? ML I suppose in a miniature sense, I mean the Grand Canyon is so big. It's big in E. African standards but it's not big by American standards. DS What was it that led Louis to Olduvai Gorge? ML I think Louis had originally gone there with an American or German expedition, I think. Anyway he knew about it and when he went there he saw stone tools all over the surface and so seeing the stone tools made him think that if he looked hard enough he'd find fossil evidence of early man. He was convinced that it would be in Africa. You know at that time many people thought that man's evolution was in Europe or Asia and not in Africa and so people tried to dissuade him and say it's not worth it, you're wasting your time, don't go there. But because he knew about these stone tools and he was just convinced that that was the place to look. Mary and Louis actually looked for years and years before they found something in the late 50s. Louis first went there in 1931. They didn't go for long periods of time because they didn't have a lot of money and it was a terrible trip down there in the car, you know, especially if it was wet and rainy, it took them several days to get there. And then they didn't have very long while they were there, and then they had to return. And then eventually, in 1959, they really hit the jackpot so to speak. DS What was it like working there do you suppose? ML In the early days it must have been wonderful because there... (Notes truncated)
Technical information
- Recorder
- Microphone
- Accessories
Archival information
- Cataloged
- 15 Feb 2010 - Ben Brotman
- Digitized
- 15 Feb 2010 - Ben Brotman
- Edited
- 15 Feb 2010 - Ben Brotman