ELA Humanities 1.5 - Teaching Lesson

Louis Leakey and Mary Nicol meet in London. They marry one year later.

Mary Leakey (formerly Mary Nicol) finds a primate skull in Olduvai Gorge, a gorge 200 miles South of Nairobi, Kenya that the Leakeys chose as their primary area of research. Louis and Mary thought that this skull connected apes and humans, but this was unfortunately not true.

Dating techniques became more accurate during the 1950s, aiding the Leakeys and other researchers in their field.

Mary Leakey discovers a primate skull that was dated to be around 1.75 million years old. This skull captured the attention of National Geographic and gave the Leakeys funding.

Louis Leakey dies of a heart attack.

An archaeologist named Donald Johanson finds parts of a skeleton that date back 3.2 million years. The importance of this discovery (other than the skeleton's incredible age) was Lucy's bone structure, which confirmed that Lucy walked upright (affirming that humans had been bipedal before our brains developed).

Mary Leakey finds a set of hominid footprints at a camp at Laetoli, 35 miles from Olduvai. These footprints increased the evidence that hominins of the time walked on two feet.

Mary Leakey dies in Nairobi, at age 84. The Leakeys redefined the way we think about our species' origins, proving that we began in Africa and finding substantial evidence to back up this claim, as well as inspiring many other young men and women to go into the field of palaeoarchaeology.

Louis and Mary Leakey made incredibly contributions to our theory of the evolution of the humans species, having collected sizable evidence that the human race started in Africa such as finding human skulls from millions of years ago.