Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Leakey, Louis Seymour Bazett

 

Born Aug. 7, 1903, in Kabete, Kenya; died Oct. 1, 1972, in London. British archaeologist and anthropologist.

In 1927–29, Leakey excavated Gamble’s Cave and established the relative chronology of a number of East African archaeological cultures. In 1930 he excavated the Neolithic Njoro Cave. Beginning in 1951 he studied rock drawings in Tanzania. Of great significance are his discoveries in 1959–60 in Olduvai Gorge of the bone remains of the fossil primates Zinjanthropus and pre-Zinjanthropus, as well as the skull of a man resembling the Java Pithecanthropus.

WORKS

The Stone Age Cultures of Kenya Colony. Cambridge, 1931.
The Stone Age Races of Kenya. London, 1935.
Stone Age Africa. London, 1936.
Olduvai Gorge 1951–1961, vols. 1–2. Cambridge, 1965–67. (Vol. 2 in collaboration with P. W. Tobians.)

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.