Ten Discoveries That Rewrote History

by Patrick Hunt

  To underestimate the earliest hominids by not appreciating their experimental and experiential awareness of stone would be a grave mistake. That a young Louis Leakey noted all the numerous obsidian stone fragments embedded in the low cliffs of this part of the African rift valley was very prescient. But Leakey was also likely to have made the other associations with long-term plentiful water and animal life because he had grown up alongside these very watering holes in this very rift valley.

  Louis Leakey was well suited to search for human ancestors in Africa

  In her 1995 biography of Louis Leakey, Ancestral Passions, Virginia Morell has documented Leakey’s early childhood and youth in East Africa. Born to British missionary parents living in the Kikuyu tribal territory, Louis was incredibly familiar with the land from having played and rambled across it since childhood. His first boyhood find of fossils made an indelible impression on him and began a lifelong passion for natural science and ultimately paleontology, the search for early life.

  Louis Leakey would have most likely been puzzled as a youth about both the commonalities and wide differences between his own missionary family, British expatriates, and the Kikuyu tribe into which he was initiated like his playmates. He would have heard the biblical stories about Adam and Eve from his Christian parents in their mission environment but could not have failed to ponder—perhaps more than most people of his generation because of his circumstances—how much humanity had widely diverged over millennia from a supposedly common parentage.

  Africa was a natural living classroom and intellectual laboratory for young Leakey. This early reflection of human diversity and the colorful complexity of tribal and clan relationships, with so many intricate behavioral codes and necessary taboos, compared to the cultural template of British expatriate life, must have naturally drawn him to anthropology as a university student at Cambridge. He already knew more experientially about Africa than his classmates and probably more than many of his professors. His African upbringing would also have made him much more comfortable in Africa among fellow hybridized expatriates than among the reserved British society, as so often happens to children of missionaries when they travel. For missionary children, “abroad” does not usually mean their adopted homeland but the original country of their parents. So after distinguishing himself at Cambridge in one of the world’s most rigorous programs, where Darwin’s challenging work was seen as brilliant theory needing verification, Leakey naturally returned to Africa where his immediate roots lay. There, Leakey was able to add more flesh to theory and coalesce his new intellectual discipline with life experiences. Of course, Louis Leakey commented ironically in 1966 on opposition to his search for human ancestors in Africa: “I was told as a young student not to waste my time searching for Early Man in Africa, since everyone knew he had started in Asia” (quoted in Ann Gibbons, The First Human, 2006).

  As early as 1929, after Cambridge and back in the native Africa he knew so well from childhood, the twenty-six-year-old Leakey had seen a high density of what he thought looked like stone tools at Kariandusi, Kenya. This assortment of stone included enough flaked black obsidian and related volcanic tool fragments littering the area to seriously merit beginning his search at Kariandusi. Such obsidian or volcanic glass would have been the optimum material for stone tools then as now.

  Leakey’s ultimate graduate education, a doctorate in paleontology, only built upon what he had observed from childhood about Africa while living in Kenya and Tanzania. Thus, Louis Leakey was one of the most perfectly suited individuals in history to search for human ancestors in the East Africa of his birth, living in a land where his earliest childhood explorations had trained his keen eyes to see what others had missed: an incredibly long prehistory of human life. Where others only saw endless rocks in dry riverbeds, Louis Leakey saw artifacts.

  Louis had married his second wife, Mary Nicol, after she had joined him as an artist to draw his finds in the field, although this led to a divorce from his first wife Frida and a tarnished social reputation. Mary Leakey was actually a better archaeologist/ paleontologist than Louis—she was more disciplined and careful with the material evidence and the tedious work of excavation, thus providing the needed rigorous scientific verifiability. Although she would always credit Louis for being the visionary teacher, as mentioned, it was Mary who first made the well-publicized discovery of Zinjanthropus, the australopithecine proof that validated Darwin and magnetized the world’s attention to their joint research.

  By the 1950s Louis and Mary Leakey, still working under the difficult circumstances of little funding, as they had since the 1930s, began to concentrate their human ancestor search efforts in the ancient lake beds torn apart by the continental divergent plate boundary of the Great Rift Valley at Olduvai. Mary Leakey had already found a new Proconsul primate fossil a few years earlier that brought them some attention but not enough to generate adequate funds for full-scale fieldwork. While Mary’s find riveted the scientific world, it would not have been possible without Louis Leakey’s unshakable confidence that this search for human origins was their lifework and would ultimately bear fruit. Louis also had a keen awareness of the huge public curiosity about human origins and an ability to inspire others to seek out their own path in this pursuit. Following Mary Leakey’s discovery of Zinjanthropus in 1959 and the National Geographic Society’s sponsorship of their research, Louis and Mary Leakey were ultimately lionized for their dedication and vision over many decades, proving with hard science what had previously been only theoretical.

  The Leakeys: First Family of Human Origins

  For over seventy-five years now the Leakeys have been acknowledged as the “First Family of Human Origins.” Because of the Leakeys, paleontology and paleoanthropology became respected fields and attracted legions of students who themselves later became pioneers in related academic careers as new finds grew exponentially. From the early 1960s onward, Louis Leakey concentrated more and more on public speaking, publicity and fund-raising ventures that promoted new research. In fieldwork, Louis and Mary complemented each other. Louis was restlessly impetuous, always looking for the larger picture, where Mary was more cautious and extremely diligent about detail. But the visionary and enthusiastic Louis also started the careers of several of his promising interns like Jane Goodall, noted chimpanzee primatologist, and Dian Fossey, equally devoted to studies of gorillas. The Leakey children, raised on archaeology sites and ultimately making their own important finds, included Jonathan and then Richard, who had great results in the Lake Turkana rift zone sites and made significant Homo erectus (Homo ergaster) finds. Richard eventually left archaeology and paleontology to champion animal preservation, but his wife, Meave, continued the Leakey legacy with further decades of African fieldwork. Now some of Richard and Meave’s children, including Louise Leakey, who works with her mother, maintain the family preeminence in human origins, with new hominid finds that stretch the dates even further back. To claim that the Leakeys have done more than anyone else in the field is unfair, but their almost dynastic visibility has certainly changed world perceptions for the better as more and more have accepted human evolution. The name Leakey will be forever associated with early human research.

  Donald Johanson proved Lucy belonged to the australopithecines

  Other paleontology pioneers followed in the Leakeys’ footsteps at Olduvai, Laetoli, Koobi Fora and many other African Great Rift sites. Now-famous names like Donald Johanson, Tim White and Nicolas Toth have joined the ranks with spectacular early human and early stone technology finds as well as continuing primate studies that demonstrate startling primate relationships.

  On November 30, 1974, Donald Johanson made perhaps one of the most dramatic paleoanthropology finds ever. Johanson, who had visited the aging Louis Leakey in 1970, was working far to the north in the same Great Rift Zone in the Afar region of northeast Ethiopia with biological anthropologist Tim White and others. In the remote Hadar Desert, rich in fossil deposits, Johanson dis
covered a complete fragmentary fossil skeleton in a spot that his team had prosaically called Locality 162 in numeric shorthand. Because it was a complete fossil skeleton—a first—and could be determined to be female, it was an incredibly huge find, riveting the world’s attention because people could identify with it in a more personal way. This female skeleton, originally marked as Hadar specimen AL 288-1, would be affectionately named “Lucy”; and as her species, Australopithecus afarensis, was then acknowledged as the earliest hominid, she was thus—at 3.2 to 3.5 million years—much older than the Leakeys’ previous australopithecines.

  In 1994, the field of paleoanthropology was stretched to new limits by Tim White’s discovery of Australopithecus ramidus. This find was datable to 3.8 million years, not long after the first human ancestors separated from the other primates in an event that is difficult to reconstruct because, as expected, the artifactual links become fewer and farther apart the deeper we go back in unrecorded time.

  Conclusion

  The Leakeys took Darwin’s unproven ideas seriously and brought the needed evidence for human evolution to light in a public way that remains seminal to this day. We should always be ready to encourage new people like the Leakeys who are not content with the intellectual status quo. Pioneers are less likely to sit still and more likely to explore in directions that may be uncomfortable to many. Pioneers in discovery don’t come cheaply—they need solid education and training, otherwise they might not come at all. Major discoveries like those the Leakeys made are often returns on intellectual investments made by previous generations.

  Even with accidental discoveries, usually someone recognizes the importance, in even the minutest evidence, of what others would ignore. While it may take years for momentum to build, with evidence strong enough to persuade those who know what to look for and where to look (rare qualities few of us possess), new discoveries will eventually lead to whole new vistas on the burgeoning landscape of knowledge. Recent discoveries will themselves be catalysts to future discoveries, and then to exciting chapters yet unwritten for understanding human prehistory and history. We are, after all, the inheritors of those earliest humans who reached into the African riverbeds with new curiosity. They stretched out their hands and wrapped them around a stone in a moment that altered both the hands and the mind and perhaps even imperceptibly the stone itself forever, making it no longer just a stone, but a tool.

  Other members of the Leakey family, Meave and Louise specifically, may now have found the oldest human ancestor yet, cautiously dated around 4 million years old. Additional recent australopithecine finds (in Dikika, Ethiopia, also in the Afar region where Lucy is from) include, in 2000, a new female infant skeleton now called “Lucy’s daughter” although she may be one hundred thousand years older than Lucy. Still, this is quite an age for Lucy, who, if she was anything like one of her possible descendants millions of years later, would not be so glib about revealing her age or date of birth.

  Chapter 10

  Tomb of 10,000 Warriors

  The Key to Imperial China

  China, 1974

  It was a cold early spring day in central China and a slight ground mist hovered, making Lishan Hill look as if it were floating over a thin white sea. A small group of farmers, pooling their labor, peered from under their broad Shensi hats in the frosty air as they looked carefully over the freshly plowed earth for the best spot to dig a well. Trying to find where the sinking water table was closest to the surface seemed risky, but they needed more water for the crops they planned to put in. The spring rains had not come with nearly enough water and even the normally muddy river was low and sluggish. The spring of 1974 was another relentlessly dry year, disastrous for fulfilling the quotas the bureaucrats had set for them far away in Beijing, the farmers grumbled.

  They dug with shovels and picks through the resisting clay, knowing their backs would be sore at the end of the exhausting day. Their depth slowly increased; at first they were at their knees, then their waists and finally by sundown at the end of the first day, their shoulders. They would have to go even deeper to find the water table. The second day was a little easier as the clay became moister as they dug. They descended below the surface so that even their straw hats were below the feet of the supervisor, whose barking voice directed them from above. Then, about thirteen feet from the surface, first one and then a second farmer stopped as both a pick and a shovel almost simultaneously struck something harder and more unyielding than the clay. Their blades rang with a harsh clanging sound. At about the same time, two other farmers hit a hole that gaped open beneath them. These two events caught everyone’s attention and the supervising boss walked up to the very edge of the trench to take a closer look at what had stopped the work. He ordered them to dig around this protruding clay-covered object to lift whatever it was out of the way so they could continue. He also ordered another farmer to go back to the village for a flashlight, torch or some kind of light to explore the deep hole because its bottom could not be seen.

  One farmer removed powdery clay from around the top of the exposed object, and the others dug deeper around it, but as they cleared the clay, they were surprised and a little frightened to note it was a human head attached to shoulders and more body beneath that. The farmers were superstitious, but the supervisor assured them that it wasn’t real, however lifelike it appeared—that it was only a statue. The supervisor was now irritated at the delay, but he ordered two farmers to extract the statue, if that was what it was, and ordered the others to continue digging. But soon they struck other huge lifelike ceramic figures wherever they dug. When a light was brought, the same fallen rows of terra-cotta figures turned up in the hollow dark gallery beneath them.

  The supervisor began to be alarmed, but, despite the slowing and even temporary stoppage of their important well-digging job, his curiosity was soon aroused. Perhaps there was a treasure here. He wondered how soon he would have to notify his own bosses and explain the delay to the authorities. By the end of the day, however, even with farmers from other villages helping to dig, no treasure was found, even in the underground gallery. More of these endless terra-cotta human figures stretched in every direction they explored. These lifeless but imposing figures were taller than all of them by almost a foot. Some figures were still standing, but most were on their sides or backs or leaning into each other. As they cleaned the emerging statues a bit throughout the day, these rural farmers could see that all these figures were dressed as soldiers from long ago.

  The supervisor was disappointed but notified the authorities the next morning of a delay in the well-digging work. His bosses came and saw for themselves the many ceramic soldiers dressed in ancient costumes. They noted the farmers would have to dig their well elsewhere in the plain until this could be resolved. Finally, proper archaeological authorities were brought all the way from Beijing. These archaeologists and bureaucrats could hardly restrain their excitement when they saw the ceramic soldiers; they took notes about the clothing and, based on this detail, dated the ceramic figures to just before the Han dynasty, well over two thousand years ago. The farmers who first struck the figures with their tools or exposed the underground gallery came back as often as they could between days of well digging elsewhere, both curious and proud, while they still had access to the site. The archaeologists slowly marked off the abandoned well-digging site and after a proper survey, began to excavate this anonymous field below Lishan Hill. This site would forever alter perceptions about ancient China and how its imperial age began. It was soon called the Tomb of 10,000 Warriors because of its apparently endless rows of terra-cotta statues. Even the archaeologists who first dug here at Lishan cannot confirm this exact story.

  As mentioned, some of the world’s greatest archaeological discoveries in modern history were accidents, not found by professionals searching years for a known object or monument, but instead by complete amateurs who likely had no idea of the importance of their finds when they chanced upon them. It is proba
ble that most of the accidental discoverers would never know how much their discoveries would impact the flow of history beyond their own lifetimes.

  How important is this discovery and what circumstances prove its history-making impact? This site, near the ancient city of Xi’an, has the largest mausoleum and the greatest single tomb artifact assemblage in the world, with almost uncountable surviving artifacts. Partly because of how the tomb was constructed, the objects within are in excellent condition. This tomb shows examples of early Chinese technology—especially intense metallurgy—at an earlier stage than known before, and it even provides details not previously known, such as examples of some martial arts at an early historical stage. The thousands of clay or terra-cotta warriors are amazingly detailed with individual features, seeming to represent traditions of ten different Chinese ethnic groups as well as giving a true sense of a unifying empire. The Qin dynasty emperor who created this marvel also imposed a drastic and rigid restructuring onto Chinese society. The tomb helps us understand why the Han dynasty—with its great flowering of Chinese culture—followed the Qin dynasty’s first unification of China. Because of its vastness and the amazing details of its artifacts, this site has stimulated archaeology in China more than any other site.