Richard Leakey
Richard Leakey
Richard Erskine Frere Leakeyis a Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician. He is second of the three sons of the archaeologists Louis Leakey and Mary Leakey, and is the younger half-brother of Colin Leakey...
NationalityKenyan
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth19 December 1944
CityNairobi, Kenya
CountryKenya
numbers people environmental
The greatest problem we face is the growing number of people living in poverty. The related sense of hopelessness has to be impacting on every part of environmental management.
believe views important
I ... believe the study of human history remains important and should not be banned. We should ensure that any archaeological studies are conducted with sensitivity and respect. Reburying relics, in my view, does not help anyone go anywhere.
kenya migrants impossible
It is virtually impossible to control Northern Kenya, which is populated chiefly by migrant nomads.
roots giving looks
To me it's a question of being able to look backward and give the present a root... To give meaning to where we are today, we need to look at where we have come from.
distance military police
Along the borders to Ethiopia and Somalia, anarchy reigns, the police and military have retreated quite some distance.
elephants people poaching
The problem is that during the 1980s, a decade of heavy poaching, the elephants retreated to safer areas. And now people have moved into the corridors once used by the elephants.
men important fossils
To investigate the history of man's development, the most important finds are, of course, hominid fossils.
mean innovation analyzing
Scientific innovations continually provide us with new means of analyzing the finds.
nature world novelty
Culture represents a novelty in the world of nature, and it could have added an effective, unifying edge to the forces of natural selection.
water needs layers
For fossils to thrive, certain favorable circumstances are required. First of all, of course, remnants of life have to be there. These then need to be washed over with water as soon as possible, so that the bones are covered with a layer of sediment.
discovery long tasks
Paleoanthropology is not a science that ends with the discovery of a bone. One has to have the original to work with. It is a life-long task.
elephants tourists tourism
The elephants were being slaughtered in masses. Some were even killed in the vicinity of big tourist hotels.
airplane years legs
Sadly, I am not able to take part in the fieldwork myself so much anymore, as both of my legs were amputated following an airplane crash twelve years ago.
west east north-africa
Whether or not all this came to pass in an East African ditch, I wouldn't like to say. Perhaps it happened in North Africa or further west, but Africa was definitely the place.