In the 20th century, the family name
Leakey
became synonymous with paleoanthropology and the search for human origins. Born to British missionaries in Kenya in the early 20th century, patriarch Louis S.B. Leakey explored East Africa and what is now Tanzania, finding skulls of human ancestors to fill in the evolutionary roadmap to modern man. Leakey worked alongside his wife, Mary, herself an experienced archaeologist and anthropologist at a time when women did not pursue science as a career. The Leakey Family outlines this fascinating family’s struggles and accomplishments, including its legacy in paleoanthropology, expressed both in the anchoring of human origins in Africa and the development of techniques still used every day in the field by researchers.