The Sediments of Time by Meave Leakey with Samira Leakey: A review

In the late twentieth century, there was an abundance of discoveries of hominin fossils and things related to them. In the 1970s, I was a devoted reader of "National Geographic" magazine and it seemed that almost every month's issue had news of some new discovery, most of them in the Great Rift Valley of Africa. Many of those discoveries were made by members of the Leakey family and their teams of searchers.

The family was led by Louis and Mary Leakey, who themselves had made many of those discoveries. The Leakeys were not only fossil hunters but were also supporters and instigators of much of the research taking place in the area at the time. For example, Louis had been instrumental in starting Jane Goodall in her work with chimpanzees and Dian Fossey with mountain gorillas, work that would consume the two women's lives and, in Fossey's case, cost her her life. In the late 1960s, he also hired a young woman named Meave Epps to head a research project on monkeys.

Meave had been trained as a marine biologist and it was her dream to get a position on a research ship, but she kept being turned down and told that the ships had no facilities for female scientists. And so, when she saw Leakey's ad to head a research facility on monkeys in Kenya, she applied and was hired. It didn't take long, though, for her focus to shift from monkeys to paleoanthropology and hominin fossils.

The impetus for her change in focus was Louis and Mary's son, Richard. Meave fell in love with him when he invited her to join his team and she worked closely with him. As it happened, he was married at the time, but he and his wife later divorced and he and Meave married. From then on, she was fully invested in fossil hunting.

This memoir, which Meave completed with her younger daughter, Samira, has some personal information about her background, her childhood, and education, and the love story with Richard and her life with him, including his several life-threatening illnesses through the years, but the greater part of it deals with the search for fossils and the piecing together of the history of human evolution from the time of the first hominins up through the time of the Neanderthals and Denisovians, and on to modern humans. To anyone, like me, who is interested in this sort of thing, it is fascinating stuff. The writing is very accessible, well-written, and easy to follow, even though it contains a truly mind-boggling wealth of details.

Not all of the fossil discoveries of the period were made by the Leakeys, and Meave gives due recognition to some of the more famous ones, including Lucy perhaps the most famous one of all. This 40% complete skeleton of a female hominin was discovered by American scientist Donald Johanson and his team in Ethiopia in 1974. And in 2007, the fossil was sent on a tour of America, a very controversial decision because of the fragility of the skeleton. Lucy's first stop in America was at the Museum of Natural Science in Houston and my family and I were right there to visit her. Viewing those 3.2 million-year-old bones was almost a religious experience for me. I felt like weeping. I can truly understand how the search for these fossils comes to dominate and define the lives of the fossil hunters.

This is recommended reading for anyone interested in human prehistory and in paleontology or in the exploits of the Leakey family. I certainly enjoyed it.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Poetry Sunday: Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

How about we share another Mary Oliver poem? After all, you can never have too many of those. In this one, the poet seems to acknowledge that it is often hard to simply live in and enjoy the moment, perhaps because we are afraid it can't last. She urges us to give in to that moment and fully experience the joy. Although "much can never be redeemed, still, life has some possibility left." Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is no...

Poetry Sunday: Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

My mother was a farm wife and a prodigious canner. She canned fruit and vegetables from the garden, even occasionally meat. But the best thing that she canned, in my opinion, was blackberry jam. Even as I type those words my mouth waters! Of course, before she could make that jam, somebody had to pick the blackberries. And that somebody was quite often named Dorothy. I think Seamus Heaney might have spent some time among the briars plucking those delicious black fruits as well, so he would have known that "Once off the bush the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour." They don't keep; you have to get that jam made in a hurry! Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust ...

Poetry Sunday: Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman

You probably remember poet Amanda Gorman from her appearance at the inauguration of President Biden. She read her poem "The Hill We Climb" on that occasion. After the senseless slaughter in Uvalde this week, she was inspired to write another poem which was published in The New York Times. It seemed perfect for the occasion and so I stole it in order to feature it here, just in case you didn't get a chance to read it in the Times . Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman Everything hurts, Our hearts shadowed and strange, Minds made muddied and mute. We carry tragedy, terrifying and true. And yet none of it is new; We knew it as home, As horror, As heritage. Even our children Cannot be children, Cannot be. Everything hurts. It’s a hard time to be alive, And even harder to stay that way. We’re burdened to live out these days, While at the same time, blessed to outlive them. This alarm is how we know We must be altered — That we must differ or die, That we must triumph or try. ...

The Nature of Things

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