Louis Leakey Quotes

#1. The pioneering anthropologist Louis Leakey once stated, Without an understanding of who we are, we cannot truly advance.

Gregg Braden

#2. I didn't want to become a professor or get tenure or teach or anything. All I wanted to do was get a degree because Louis Leakey said I needed one, which was right, and once I succeeded I could get back to the field.

Jane Goodall

#3. With the discovery of Zinjanthropus at Olduvai Gorge in 1959, my grandmother Mary Leakey pioneered the research in East Africa with my grandfather Louis. Many more spectacular fossil finds have since been made, both in Africa and elsewhere, by many researchers driven to understand our past.

Louise Leakey

#4. Olduvai Gorge gives us one of the most remarkable stories of the past-the last chapter of the Earth's history, starting at the present day, right away back 2 million years.

Louis Leakey

#5. Stone tools are fossilized human behavior.

Louis Leakey

#6. We set up the promised clinic for the sick and wounded Masai.

Louis Leakey

#7. Sometime during the many millions of years that have elapsed since mammalian faunas came into existence, some sort of island crossed from West Africa to South America.

Louis Leakey

#8. The Foxhall jaw has now been missing for many years.

Louis Leakey

#9. I kept an open mind on the question of whether a hominid had been present in Europe in the early Pleistocene.

Louis Leakey

#10. Sometimes string figures were used to illustrate stories, as in the case of an Eskimo example that depicts a man catching a salmon. Sometimes they had magic or religious significance.

Louis Leakey

#11. The trip I made to Angola to study the prehistoric contents of the gravel beds as a means of deciding the age of the deposits and their economic potential was the first time prehistory had ever been used for such a purpose.

Louis Leakey

#12. South Africa had a long record of studies in prehistory, going back to the end of the last century.

Louis Leakey

#13. There is tragic evidence to show that the paintings at the French prehistoric art sites are deteriorating.

Louis Leakey

#14. I put a bullet into the back of the crocodile's neck just behind the head, thus killing it. If a crocodile is hit in any other part of its anatomy it disappears into the water and is irrecoverable.

Louis Leakey

#15. People frequently ask me why I devote so much time to seeking out facts about man's past ... the past shows clearly that we all have a common origin and that our differences in race, colour and creed are only superficial.

Louis Leakey

#16. The author knows just what he wants to illustrate and how he would like it to be done.

Louis Leakey

#17. At Olduvai, for 20 years, Mary and I had investigated and made a general survey of the overall geology.

Louis Leakey

#18. The Dalmatian breed of dog has many primitive characteristics.

Louis Leakey

#19. I felt that in time simple stone tools would be found in early Pleistocene in England.

Louis Leakey

#20. Colonial governors and senior civil servants are not easy people to argue with, and I was not popular because of my criticism of the colonial service in Kenya.

Louis Leakey

#21. Raising funds for my fourth expedition proved to be very difficult.

Louis Leakey

#22. Far too often animals are put to sleep when they could be saved through proper care and nursing.

Louis Leakey

#23. To save an animal's life in order that it may suffer indefinitely is something I would never condone.

Louis Leakey

#24. Most Kikuyu marriages were arranged on the basis of what is described by anthropologists as the bride price.

Louis Leakey

#25. Eloquent testimony to the recovery powers of wild animals frequently becomes apparent from the study of skeletons housed in museums.

Louis Leakey

#26. Although we followed that hyena for the best part of half an hour, we never caught up with it.

Louis Leakey

#27. I saw what looked like another fallen tree in front of me and put my foot on it to cross over. At that moment it reared up in front of me-the biggest python I had ever seen!

Louis Leakey

#28. I have examined the stomach contents of seven aardvarks.

Louis Leakey

#29. When my father arrived in Kenya, he had found the Kikuyu way of life similar to that of the British at the time the Romans invaded England 2,000 years ago.

Louis Leakey

#30. The majority of people in Angola were not provided with any kind of schooling and were completely illiterate, very badly paid, and treated almost as slaves.

Louis Leakey