Have you ever looked at an old painting, picture, or letter and wondered where it came from? History always fascinates and gives us a sense of where we came from. We ask questions about how people lived, how they worked or played. We question how buildings were made and how royalty came to power. My goal is to provide readers with random bits of history to make you think about our past and where it is leading our future.
To start off my wonderfully informative blog about random historical facts, I'll use Google's Doodle on Feb. 6, 2013 as a starting point. In honour of Mary Leakey's 100th Birthday today, Google has created a Doodle celebrating her life and archaeological finds. Known as the "Grand Dame of Archaeology", Mary Leakey was a famous British Anthropologist who is considered one of the creators of modern archaeological practices. One of her most famous discoveries is finding the first fossilized Proconsul skull, the Proconsul being an extinct ape that is believed to be an ancestor of modern humans. Another famous find are the Laetoli footprints. Found in 1978 south of the Olduvai Gorge, the Laetoli footprints are the first known example of bipedalism in Pliocene hominids.
One of the first archaeologists I remember studying in university was Mary Leakey and her discovery at Laetoli. More of a fossil hunter than a true historical archaeologist, she brought light to the world of ancient hominids and their ancestors. One of the first anthropologists to set forth and find evidence of an African diaspora of humans, she would explore and dig around the Olduvai Gorge with her husband finding evidence to prove their theories.
Thank you to the Turkana Basin Institute for having a wonderful web page about the Leakey family.
Please visit their website:
"A Century of the Leakey Family in East Africa"
Enjoy the information! New blogs to come weekly.
All information is from my own personal notes and from my studies. If there is any information that I have taken from another source, I will ensure that the source is cited properly.
