Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

Leakey sent the OH 7 hand bones to Dr. John Napier of the Royal Free Hospital in England. The results of Napier’s study were pleasing to Leakey. The bones, said Napier (1962, p. 409), were “strikingly human in one revealing and . . . critical character. The tips of the fingers and thumb were surmounted by broad, stout, flat, nail-bearing terminal phalanges, a condition that, as far as we know, is found only in man.”

The Leakeys sent the OH 8 foot bones to Michael Day for reconstruction. Day, recalling his impressions on completing his work, later said: “My hair stood on end. The foot was completely human” (Cole 1975, p. 253).

Like Zinjanthropus, the fossils of the new creatures were found along with broken animal bones and stone tools, scattered across a so-called living floor.

Some distance away from one of the new sites, but at the same level, a circle of large stones was found. The Leakeys interpreted this as the foundation for a windbreak made of brush, giving rise to speculation that the large-brained Olduvai hominid had made use of base camps.

Louis Leakey decided he had now come upon the real toolmaker of the lower levels of Olduvai, the real first true human. His bigger brain confirmed his status, although it was Darwin himself who had said that “one cannot measure intelligence in cubic centimeters” (Wendt 1972, p. 246). A full report on the new Olduvai hominid was published in 1964 by Louis Leakey, John Napier, and Philip Tobias. In this paper (Leakey et al. 1964), they called the creature Homo habilis. The name, suggested by Raymond Dart, means, “handy man.” The designation Homo signified a close family relation to modern humans. As we shall see, however, many scientists doubted whether the honor was merited.

After the discovery of Homo habilis, Zinjanthropus, no longer the first true human, was demoted to Australopithecus boisei, a somewhat more robust variety of Australopithecus robustus. Both of these robust australopithecines had saggital crests, and are regarded not as human ancestors but as evolutionary offshoots that eventually became extinct.

The whole business of saggital crests complicates matters somewhat. Male gorillas and some male chimpanzees also have saggital crests, whereas the females of these species do not (Fix 1984, p. 32). This leads to the possibility that creatures assigned to different australopithecine species, on the grounds that some have saggital crests and others do not, may simply represent sexual variants within a single species. For example, Mary Leakey (1971, p. 281) said: “The possibility that A. robustus and A. africanus represent the male and female of a single species deserves serious consideration.” If the possibility raised by Mary Leakey were found to be correct, this would mean that generations of experts have been wildly mistaken about the australopithecines.

11.4.3 Leakey’s Views on human evolution