Sweet Fern Productions - Mary Leakey and the Laetoli Footprints Rough Video Cut 09/03/15 Narrators: Meave Leakey, Stony Brook University Ian Tattersall, American Museum of Natural History Pat Shipman, Penn State Ron Clarke, University of the Witwatersrand —— Text Card: Animated Life: The Laetoli Footprints ML: I’ve never really thought footprints are terribly interesting. Text Card: Ancient Laetoli Savannah. 3.5 Million years ago <Music> TEXT: Voice of Meave Leakey, Paleoanthropologist, Mary Leakey’s Daughter-in- law, Stony Brook University ML: But those particular ones, because of their age, because of how well- preserved they are, they’re absolutely unique. You can imagine the people walking across the landscape 3.5 million years ago1 2. TEXT: Voice of Ian Tattersall, Curator Emeritus, American Museum of Natural History IT: We want to know about ourselves, we want to know where we came from. And we want to know what elements entered into our becoming human. Text Card: Leakey Camp, 1935 TEXT: Voice of Patricia Shipman, Paleoanthropologist, Pennsylvania State University PS: Mary and Louis Leakey were a couple who almost singlehandedly demonstrated that there was important early anthropology of humankind in Africa. 1 “New Species of Man: Ancestors from ‘Afar’.” Science News 115.3 (1979): 36. Web. 2 Agnew, N., Demas, M., & Leakey, M. (1996). The Laetoli footprints.Science (New York, N.Y.), 271(5256), 1651 ML: Most scientists in the west anyway didn’t believe that humans evolved in Africa3 4. And it was Louis’s persistence, cause he’d grown up in Africa, he’d seen stone tools lying around, and he always felt Africa was the home of mankind5 6. IT: Louis was the grizzled explorer who would produce fossils out of the pocket of his overalls with a flourish. ML: Oh yah, no, Mary was always the scientist behind the two of them. She was the one who was doing the fieldwork, and Louis the one who was raising the funds and drawing in the publicity and the popularity. Text card: Who was Mary Leakey? RC: I first met Mary in 1963. She was rather a formidable character to me. TEXT: Voice of Ronald Clarke, Paleoanthropologist, University of the Witwatersrand PS: She was one who did not suffer fools gladly. ML: She loved her cigars. She liked her whiskey. RC: She loved her dogs. One of the dogs might come up and look at you and she’d say “Ron, I think Sammy would like your potato skin.” And somebody would give the dog a piece of potato skin. And she’d say “No, no, he’s got to have butter on it.” Meanwhile we were rationed on butter. (laughs) ML: There were very few women scientists when she began. RC: She ran the affairs there. ML: She just would not tolerate bad work. And she’d, you know, go out to them and say “What do you think you’re digging? You’re not digging your garden and you’re not digging potatoes. RC?: She was a meticulous excavator. ML: And that’s what people do now and I think she was one of the first to use such exacting methods. 3 Waynman, E. (2012, June 12). Louis Leakey: The Father of Hominid Hunting. Web. 4 Morell, V. (1995). Ancestral passions : The Leakey family and the quest for humankind’s beginnings. New York: Simon & Schuster, pg 188-189. 5Waynman, E. (2012, June 12). Louis Leakey: The Father of Hominid Hunting. Web. 6 Meredith, M. (2011). Born in Africa : The quest for the origins of human life(1st ed.). New York: PublicAffairs, 39 RC: The Leakeys made major contributions to the discovery of early human ancestors in Africa. TEXT: Proconsul africanus, 1948 Paranthropus boisei (Zinjanthropus boisei) 1959 Homo habilis, 1964 7 8 IT: They continued working in Olduvai Gorge right up into the early 1970s, when Louis died.9 10 PS: I think returning to the work she loved for Mary may have been a solace and not many years after Louis died she would discover something unprecedented. Text Card: THE DISCOVERY, 1976 ML: I think it was ‘76, wasn’t it?11 12 IT: That’s right. Text: Rock hyrax, Procavia capensis IT: In the field, it’s very hard work and you’re always looking for distraction. PS: People do all kinds of goofball things at the end of the day. The story goes that people were throwing elephant dung at each other. TEXT: (dung) PS: And upon missing the elephant dung Frisbee that had been tossed to him, Andrew Hill... IT: ...dove to the ground. And, uh, found himself face to face with a footprint. I think it was a giraffe or it was a large mammal.13 14 PS: There were elephant footprints15 16, there were guinea fowl17 18. 7 Pilbeam, D. (1998). Mary Douglas Leakey (1913‐1996. American Anthropologist, 100(4), 988-990. 8 Hill, A. (1983). Digging up Man’s Past. Ambio, 12(6), 313, 9 Hill, A. (1983). Digging up Man’s Past. Ambio, 12(6), 312. 10 Leakey, M. (1984). Disclosing the past. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pg 158 11 Leakey, M. (1984). Disclosing the past. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pg 161. 12 Morell, V. (1995). Ancestral passions : The Leakey family and the quest for humankind’s beginnings. New York: Simon & Schuster, pg 472-473 13 Leakey, M. (1981). Tracks and Tools. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences (1934-1990),292(1057), 95. 14 Leakey, M. (1984). Disclosing the past. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pg 161 ML: Mary herself excavated them. IT: And it was incredibly arduous work. But, of course, in the back of the mind of every paleoanthropologist, the hope is to find hominid tracks. Text Card: Two years later19 20. IT: And it’s that that was realized at Laetoli. PS: There they were...ancient hominid footprints. ML: They were just spectacular. PS: It is a remarkable find. It gives a flash into the past. ML: The footprints were preserved by volcanic eruption21 22. IT: A nearby volcano puffed out a cloud of this carbonitite ash23 24.Then, it rained. And the rain turned this volcanic ash into a kind of a muddy slurry25 26. A bit like wet concrete. RC: While it was still wet, the animals came out again and walked over it, including the hominids. You wonder what was going through their mind, what did they think about this volcano? 15 Morell, V. (1995). Ancestral passions : The Leakey family and the quest for humankind’s beginnings. New York: Simon & Schuster, pg 473 16 Leakey, M. (1984). Disclosing the past. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pg 173 17 Leakey, M. (1984). Disclosing the past. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pg 179 18 Jacobs, L. (1988). M. D. Leakey and J. M. Harris (eds.): Laetoli: A Pliocene Site in Northern Tanzania. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 8(4), 455 19 Agnew, N., Demas, M., & Leakey, M. (1996). The Laetoli footprints.Science (New York, N.Y.), 271(5256), 1651 20 Leakey, M. (1984). Disclosing the past. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pg 174. 21 Pilbeam, D. (1998). Mary Douglas Leakey (1913‐1996. American Anthropologist, 100(4), 988-990. 22 Leakey, M. (1981). Tracks and Tools. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences (1934-1990),292(1057), 98 23 Leakey, M. (1981). Tracks and Tools. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences (1934-1990),292(1057), 98. 24 Morell, V. (1995). Ancestral passions : The Leakey family and the quest for humankind’s beginnings. New York: Simon & Schuster, pg 474 25 Leakey, M. (1981). Tracks and Tools. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences (1934-1990),292(1057), 98. 26 Leakey, M. (1984). Disclosing the past. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pg 174-178 IT: These are our ancestors. These are the creatures that ultimately gave rise to ourselves27 28 and we want to know what they were like. TEXT CARD: Interpretation IT: As far as the number of hominids that, uh, made the trackways is concerned, there’s a bit of dispute29 30. RC: I’m convinced there were only two. ML: Mmm mmm. I would absolutely disagree with that. RC: Mary thought there were three3132. ML: You can see the, the individual walking behind has put his feet in the footprints of the individual in the front33 34. IT: (clears throat) That is still under active, uh, discussion. RC: Very few of us agree on every point of analysis. And this is how science progresses. ML: It is, yeah. <music change> IT: These footprints, what they did was to prove that hominids were up moving around on two feet 3.5 million years ago35 36. RC: We already had the skeletal remains (TEXT: Australopithecus afarensis) that showed us that the early hominids were upright walkers37 38. But here, for the first 27 “New Species of Man: Ancestors from ‘Afar’.” Science News 115.3 (1979): 36. Web. 28 Waynman, E. (2012, June 12). Louis Leakey: The Father of Hominid Hunting. Web. 29 Leakey, M. (1984). Disclosing the past. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, pg 177-178 30 31 Leakey, M. (1981). Tracks and Tools. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences (1934-1990),292(1057), 99. 32 Morell, V. (1995). Ancestral passions : The Leakey family and the quest for humankind’s beginnings. New York: Simon & Schuster, pg 501-502. 33 Leakey, M. (1981). Tracks and Tools. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences (1934-1990),292(1057), 99. 34 Morell, V. (1995). Ancestral passions : The Leakey family and the quest for humankind’s beginnings. New York: Simon & Schuster, pg 501- 502. 35 Pilbeam, D. (1998). Mary Douglas Leakey (1913‐1996. American Anthropologist, 100(4), 988-990. 36 “New Species of Man: Ancestors from ‘Afar’.” Science News 115.3 (1979): 36. Web. time, we could see the actual footprints, showing the manner in which they walked upright. ML: Bipedal walking is considered to be one of the hallmarks of humanity. ML: If you’re walking on four legs, your hands are not free to do all the things that we do with our hands. IT: Without our hands we could never have become human. <music> RC: That’s of course only a small segment of the Leakey’s contribution. RC: Mary demonstrated that dedication pays off. You, you dedicate yourself, and you achieve results. PS: I think she was to me and to many other women in this field, Mary was an inspiration. TEXT CARD: MARY LEAKEY 1913-1996 CREDITS Directed, Produced and Edited by Flora Lichtman and Sharon Shattuck Advisers Laura Bonetta Sean B. Carroll Dennis Liu Original Score Martin Crane Director of Photography Olga Abramson 37 Johanson, D. (2004). Lucy, Thirty Years Later: An Expanded View of Australopithecus afarensis. Journal of Anthropological Research, 60(4), 476 38 White, T. (1980). Evolutionary implications of pliocene hominid footprints.Science (New York, N.Y.), 208(4440), 175-6. Production Design Flora Lichtman Ruth Lichtman Sharon Shattuck Emma Wiseman Research Ruth Lichtman Transcriptions Davis Bynum Puppeteers (Sharon is double checking on these spellings) Ella Belenky Matt Carney Flora Lichtman Ruth Lichtman Spencer Lott Rowan Magee Andy Manjuck Ian Seim Sharon Shattuck Emma Wiseman