The fossil man: Inside Dr Leakey’s search for early man and hunt for poachers and cartels

The fossil man: Inside Dr Leakey’s search for early man and hunt for poachers and cartels

In the corner office on the ground floor of the Louis Leakey Memorial Institute, Dr Richard Leakey’s office was one of the few no-go zones - unless you had an appointment. Above the office, on the first floor, was the archaeology unit, and on the second floor, the palaeontology unit, where his wife Meave worked.

Outside, at the entrance to the building, was his father’s statue holding an Acheulian hand axe – one of the family’s ‘early man’ discoveries in Kenya’s Kariandusi, Olorgesailie and Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge.

Dr Leakey, who died on Sunday, January 2, aged 77, came from a family deeply involved in searching for clues on early man. It was a hobby that turned into a career. His mother, Dr Mary Leakey, and father, Dr Louis Leakey, were fossil hunters. In 1927, they discovered on Rusinga island fossilised remains of a Proconsul, which they claimed was an extinct early ape-like creature, now registered as KNM-RU 2036. It was a scientific goof.

But it was Dr Mary Leakey’s later work at Olduvai Gorge, and her descriptions of what she called the ‘Oldowan industry”, a stone tool culture that started two million years ago, that would establish East Africa as the possible cradle of mankind. They had also discovered Homo habilis and Homo erectus, which helped advance the understanding of human evolution. That saved the family name.

Kapenguria trial

For his part, Dr Louis Leakey, had written two extensive volumes, History of Southern Kikuyu, and always collided with Jomo Kenyatta in Europe on who was best suited to write the histories of the Kikuyu. By then Kenyatta had authored his own book, Facing Mount Kenya, and always chided Dr Louis Leakey, who was born in Kabete and whose prowess in both Kikuyu and Kiswahili was remarkable.

Dr Leakey would later be used by the colonial government as an intelligence officer as they tried to suppress the Mau Mau movement. He would later be used as a translator during the Kapenguria trial against Kenyatta and translated the KAU documents.

Dr Richard Leakey grew up in this environment – and it shaped his future career as a paleoanthropologist, a civil servant and politician. He saw himself as a Kenyan and felt at home with other loyalists who had inherited the post-colonial state. That explains, in part, his friendship with Charles Njonjo – who also died on Sunday.

With no academic papers, he had at first thought of venturing into the tour business, bought a Land Rover and got a pilot’s licence. Then he started following the best-known fossil hunter, Kamoya Kimeu, whose luck in the field was unmatched.

Mr Kimeu and Richard Leakey had one thing in common: Both were not trained palaeontologists and were more like antiquarians. Dr Leakey said that as a small boy, as he followed his parents, he wandered into the field and discovered what turned out to be a complete jaw of an extinct pig. His parents were thrilled - and the boy was excited.

When Dr Louis Leakey hired South African archaeologist Glynn Isaac as the warden of prehistoric sites in Kenya, the young archaeologist took Richard with him to the field and they pioneered research in the Koobi Fora, under what was known as the East Rudolf Expedition. Isaac would also be involved in the excavation of Kenya's famous hand axe site in Olorgesailie.

But it was Koobi Fora, in Marsabit, that would become Leakey’s luck. Richard had in 1967 discovered the potential of the Lake Turkana region by chance. While flying from the River Omo region, where fossils had been discovered, he peered over the window and saw what looked like ancient lake beds.

With the help of National Geographic, he had returned and to his delight, the land was an open museum with fossils and stone tools. But the discovery that surprised the world was KNM-ER 406, a near-complete skull of an ape-like being. They called it Australopithecine boisei and it was thought to have lived 2.6 million years ago on those shores.

With the death of his father, Richard had taken over the running of the National Museums of Kenya, which was then synonymous with the family. Dr Richard Leakey, for many years, was the face of the museums – lobbying for funds for his Koobi Fora project and accused of using his museums position to run separate projects.

Conducting research

In Koobi Fora, he would later have an airstrip and always flew there in a personal plane. Everyone thought it belonged to the National Museums but when he left, he went with it.

The Koobi Fora station is a series of banda for researchers approved by Leakey to work in the area. Those who fell out with him would be locked out of Koobi Fora or any other Kenyan site. The best-known case involved Dr Martin Pickford, who was in July 1985 barred from conducting research in Kenya. He accused Dr Leakey of engineering the ban and later wrote a book, Richard Leakey: Master of Deceit, with Eustace Gitonga, the former exhibits director.

The book, published in 1995, not only exposed how Leakey ran the institution but also the fundraising strategies that he employed – some, they claimed, to his personal benefit. They cited letters, records from Leakey’s office, account books - and attacked all palaeontologists and archaeologists in Leakey’s camp. He never sued, and the book slowly went out of circulation.

After Leakey left the National Museums of Kenya in 1989, Pickford, who was working in South Africa, applied for another research permit after his friend Andrew Kiptoon was named minister for research and technology. In between, in 1989, President Moi had appointed him as the director of the Kenya Wildlife Service, which was to replace the corrupt and inept department of wildlife – the playground of poachers and ivory kings.

Dr Leakey not only transformed the KWS into a paramilitary unit but also created a gravy train as money from donors and foundations flowed in. He had Moi gain international prominence by setting ablaze a 12-tonne stockpile of ivory as he attempted to clean up the parks.

But in January 1994, Dr Leakey was edged out of KWS after it was alleged that a secret investigation had uncovered cases of abuses of power and corruption. By coincidence, perhaps, the book attacking Leakey was released after this and both Gitonga and Pickford were at pains to explain the coincidence.

It was also during this period that Leakey joined lawyer Paul Muite and businessman Robert Shaw in launching the Safina Party ahead of the 1997 General Election. President Moi claimed that Leakey was an atheist, which was true, and that he was sponsored by foreign powers and donors to take over the presidency.

The climax of the war between Moi and Leakey happened outside a Nakuru court when Dr Leakey was attacked and whipped by some Kanu youth. While his party was only registered a few weeks before the elections, it won six seats in Parliament, and it nominated Leakey as an MP. His brother, Phillip, had in 1979 been elected as Lang’ata MP.

It was as a Safina-nominated MP and with a new clout that Dr Leakey learnt that his nemeses Pickford and Gitonga, who had authored a book against him, were to work under the aegis of a new outfit, Community Museums of Kenya, and survey the rich fossil sites in the Tugen Hills.

It is claimed that Dr Leakey engineered the cancellation of Dr Pickford’s permit dated October 30, 1998. That September, Leakey had quit his position as Safina-nominated MP after Moi reappointed him to his old KWS job, and in July 1999 he was appointed the Head of Civil Service. It was a deal brokered by Njonjo and World Bank president James Wolfensohn.

Under the deal, Leakey would come into government with a new team from the private sector to combat inefficiency and corruption and help restore foreign aid. By March 2001, he found he was of no use inside the Moi government, where corruption and cartels reigned.

But while Leakey was in the ‘dream team’ he never forgot the small battles. In a letter dated March 14, 2000 and later filed in court, Leakey apparently wrote to Dr George Abungu, the National Museums director-general, accusing Dr Pickford of “collecting fossils” and asking Dr Abungu to “urgently get assistance from the Director of CID and that you send an officer plus someone from [the National Museums] to intercept Pickford”.

“His possessions should be thoroughly searched, and any fossils should be confiscated. (After that) a search should also be made of his premises in Nairobi.”

What we know is that Dr Pickford’s permit was cancelled, and he was arrested. The big question of who controls archaeological and paleontological research in Kenya would linger for some time as Leakey always sought to have his way, and say, even after he had left the museums.

Leakey, like his father Louis, was always frightened by scientists who doubted his scientific claims. His father had faced some embarrassing moments when he was once outed by Prof Percy Boswell of Imperial College after claiming that some Olduvai Gorge findings were of great age – and it turned out that they were only 15,000 years old.

“Dr Louis Leakey was a charger, a young bull, so full of surging belief in himself and the validity of his soaring ideas that he shook off these warnings as he would a gnat,” wrote Donald Johnson in the book Lucy.

Dr Louis Leakey had asked Prof Boswell, a geologist, to go to the field and see the evidence. After he returned to Europe and as Dr Johnson wrote, “Boswell demolished (Leakey) in a devastating paper published in Nature. These catastrophes haunted Leakey for years. He would have put them behind him more quickly if he had been willing to admit error. But he was stubbornness incarnate.”

 Homo sapiens

It was the same predicament that faced Dr Richard Leakey. Made famous after discovering KNM-1470, one of the first claims on this fossil was that it was of the Australopithecine (flat face) family. But when science started to doubt its age and its lineage as the proper evolutionary line to Homo sapiens, Dr Leakey continued to defend his position even when scientific evidence was against him.

He had little space but to find some older fossils of the 1470 types rather than review his human-origin thinking. He fought, when he could, those who discounted him. Today, it is accepted that this was a different species than what Leakey thought and that there were four such species that lived in the Turkana basin between 2.5 million and 1.5 million years ago.

While Leakey was passionate about fossils, he was more passionate about wildlife conversation. He genuinely worried about the fate of elephants and rhinos – the increased poaching and the reluctance by insiders in the government to do something.

His thinking was that the ban on hunting never stopped the practice, and that what Kenya needed was a regulatory policy. “Think of a policy to regulate it, so that we can make it sustainable…because an illegal crop, an illegal market is unsustainable in the long term, whatever it is,” he once told a seminar at the Strathmore Business School.

After he left the civil service, Dr Leakey joined Stony Brook University as professor of anthropology. He also set up the Turkana Basin Institute, which was to continue research in Kenya.

Some of his famous books are The Sixth Extinction and The Origin of Humankind.

Dr Leakey’s career, like that of his father, spanned politics and anthropology. But unlike his great grandfather Canon Leakey, he was an atheist.

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