Louis Leakey got Cambridge to accept Kikuyu as his foreign language
Raised among the Kikuyu near Nairobi, Louis Leakey spoke their language fluently, walked with their gait and was initiated into the group. When Cambridge required a modern language, he persuaded the university to accept Kikuyu, spawning a tall tale that he had examined himself. He went on to help prove humans evolved in Africa.
Leakey was born on 7 August 1903 to Church of England missionaries posted at Kabete, in British East Africa. As a boy he moved into a hut of Kikuyu design at the bottom of the family garden, using it to house his collection of birds' eggs and skulls, and kept pets including a serval cat and a baboon, which later in life saddened him. The family shuttled to England during his parents' bouts of ill health, and at 16 he was sent to Weymouth College, where he complained of bullying and petty rules.
He entered Cambridge in 1922 meaning to become a missionary. A trip to the Tendaguru dinosaur beds in the former German East Africa steered him towards fossils, and under the anthropologist Alfred Cort Haddon he graduated in 1926 with a double first in archaeology and anthropology. Cambridge then sent him to East Africa, where he dug dozens of sites and studied their artefacts systematically for the first time. At Gamble's Cave in 1927 he met Frida Avern, whom he married in 1928. He earned his PhD in 1930 at 27, and epilepsy and headaches kept him on medication for the rest of his life.
Olduvai Gorge became his arena. In 1913 the German Hans Reck had pulled a skeleton from its Bed II and argued it was around 600,000 years old, provoking an uproar. In November 1931 Leakey led an expedition there, let Reck enter the gorge first, and won a bet by finding Acheulean tools within 24 hours, backing Reck's find. Sceptics in Cambridge stayed unconvinced, and in 1935 a check by P. G. H. Boswell at Kanam and Kanjera went badly when Leakey's iron site markers had vanished.
His personal life drew scrutiny too. While Frida was pregnant he took up with Mary Nicol, a 20-year-old illustrator, and a Cambridge panel examined his morals. Mary Leakey became his partner in the Olduvai discoveries. He also launched the field careers of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Birutė Galdikas, whom he called the Trimates. He died on 1 October 1972.
Source: Louis Leakey
