L. S. B. Leakey - Unveiling Mans Origins (Routledge Revivals): Ten Decades of Thought About Human Evolution

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Routledge Revivals

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Unveiling Man's Origins

Originally published in 1969, the aim of this book is to tell the story of the major discoveries which have been made and the attitude of the world at large to these discoveries during the ten decades since Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859. For anyone interested in man's past and in understanding the significance of each new discovery relating to human evolution, this reissue will be of great value.

Unveiling Man's Origins

Ten Decades of thought about Human Evolution

L. S. B. Leakey
and
Vanne Morris Goodall

First published 1969 in the USA
by Schenkman Publishing Company Inc.

First Published in Great Britain 1970
by Methuen & Co. Ltd

This edition first published in 2011 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1969 Schenkman Publishing Company Inc, Cambridge, Mass.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact.

A Library of Congress record exists under LC Control Number: 0416147003

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-61119-0 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-61128-2 (pbk)

Unveiling
Man's Origins

Ten Decades of thought
about Human Evolution

L. S. B. Leakey and
Vanne Morris Goodall

Methuen & Co. Ltd
11 New Fetter Lane London EC4

First published 1969 in the U.S.A.
by Schenkman Publishing Company Inc.
1969 Schenkman Publishing Company Inc,
Cambridge, Mass.
First published in Great Britain 1970
by Methuen & Co Ltd,
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4
SBN p.b. 416 27970 8
h.b. 416 14700 3

This book is available in both hardback and paperback editions. The paperback edition is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Printed in Great Britain by
Butler & Tanner Ltd,
Frome and London

Contents

Since 1960 I have given numerous lectures in the United States of America, both to students at universities and also to students at junior colleges and to a lesser extent at high schools, right across the country. Over this period I became more and more aware of the lack of a suitable book to provide the background for students of anthropology concerned with the wide, overall, gradual growth of our knowledge of human evolution.

It was therefore, with great interest, that I listened to a proposal of Mr Alfred S. Schenkman of Schenkman Publishing Company that I write such a book. Specifically, he suggested that it be aimed primarily at college students of anthropology but also that it be a book which would appeal to the ever-growing circle of laymen interested in the origins of man.

The proposal intrigued me greatly. But I knew that if I took on such a project it would involve an incredibly vast amount of detailed research, in a number of libraries; and I knew also that I simply could not spare the time for this work although I recognized its importance. I suggested therefore that I should search for a suitable collaborator who would undertake that vitally important task of reading up on the literature and selecting from it the information to be included in our book. I accordingly approached Vanne Morris Goodall.

Mrs Goodall has long been interested in anthropological literature. She is known as a writer, and is the mother of Jane van Lawick Goodall who has become famous for her studies of wild chimpanzees. After some hesitation, Mrs Goodall agreed to accept the assignment and in fact is responsible for the actual writing of .

The task was a very difficult one, for two reasons. Clearly, a great deal of the information available had to be omitted. Furthermore, it was equally clear that the decade-per-chapter device would make it impossible to produce a book of this particular nature with successive chapters flowing freely, one to the next. Indeed, each chap- ter in Part II is meant to be read as a distinct entity although each should be read in its proper sequence.

I am sure that despite what drawbacks this book may have, the majority of my colleagues will find that it fills a real gap in the available information on early man. Having already had the typescript read by a number of non-specialist friends, Mrs Goodall and I firmly believe that many laymen who are interested in the story of man's origins and in how that story has gradually been unfolded will read this book with very real interest.

L. S. B. LEAKEY

February, 1969
NAIROBI, KENYA

It was in 1859 that Charles Darwin startled the English-speaking world by publishing his first book dealing with what was then the Theory of Evolution. A few years later, he brought out his second book a little less than one hundred years ago in which he discussed the descent of man.

Darwin proposed the idea that man, as we know him today, was a member of the zoological family which includes apes, monkeys and prosimians, and he went further, and prophesied that the day would come when it would be shown that Africa had been the main evolutionary centre of all the old-world higher primates, as well as of man himself.

During the long period of nearly one hundred years that has elapsed, gradually and slowly some of the facts concerning our own evolution have been uncovered and become easier to understand; but we are still a very long way from knowing all that we need to know about ourselves and our evolutionary history.

From time to time, as for example after the discovery of the Java skull at the end of the last century, people have thought that the story was complete. It seemed, then, that a clear missing link between ape and man had been found, and the complexity of the true story was not even faintly appreciated.

Before and just after World War I, a considerable number of human anatomists postulated, on theoretical grounds, that man must have separated from his nearest cousins, the great apes, at least as far back as the separation of the Families to which the dog, the cat, the hyena and the bear belong. This was a rational view, but when little or no evidence in support of it came to light, there was a change of scientific opinion, so that in many textbooks published since World War II it has been suggested that man's evolution was by four simple stages (or as the French call them stades volutives). Each in turn, according to these suggestions, succeeded the other, during the last five or six million years.

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