The Sediments of Time: My Lifelong Search for the Past

Meave Leakey · Samira Leakey

Nov 2020 · HarperCollins

About this ebook

"A fascinating glimpse into our origins. Meave Leakey is a great storyteller, and . . . gives us a book that is informative and captivating." —Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute

Meave Leakey's thrilling, high-stakes memoir—written with her daughter Samira—encapsulates her distinguished life and career on the front lines of the hunt for our human origins, a quest made all the more notable by her stature as a woman in a highly competitive, male-dominated field.

In The Sediments of Time, the preeminent paleoanthropologist brings us along on her remarkable journey to reveal the diversity of our early pre-human ancestors and how past climate change drove their evolution. She offers a fresh account of our past, as recent breakthroughs have allowed new analysis of her team's fossil findings and vastly expanded our understanding of our ancestors.Meave's own personal story is replete with drama, from thrilling discoveries on the shores of Lake Turkana to run-ins with armed herders and every manner of wildlife, to raising her children and supporting her renowned paleoanthropologist husband Richard Leakey's ambitions amidst social and political strife in Kenya. When Richard needs a kidney, Meave provides him with hers, and when he asks her to assume the reins of their field expeditions after he loses both legs in a plane crash, the result of likely sabotage, Meave steps in. The Sediments of Time is the summation of a lifetime of Meave Leakey's efforts; it is a compelling picture of our human origins and climate change, as well as a high-stakes story of ambition, struggle, and hope.

"Extraordinary . . . This inspirational autobiography stands among the finest scientist memoirs." — The New York Times Book Review , Editors' Choice

Ratings and reviews

"Evolution is constantly at work as features change or are co-opted for a different task and time" This book, on top of being a first person memoir of the attempt at the standardization of paleo anthropology by the Leakey family, is also an in-depth look at our own evolution from bone study to genetic anthropological breakthroughs. In the end, it is an extant survey of certain parts of African fossil hunting and sedimentary study. This book also makes great assumptions: that the reader either has knowledge of history and fossil morphology and some rudimentary knowledge of physical science. Without these, the book would be of little interest. More than an autobiography but just short of a textbook, it's interesting but not life changing. [disclaimer: I received this book from an outside source and voluntarily chose to read and review it]

About the author

MEAVE LEAKEY currently coheads the significant field efforts in northern Kenya, started nearly a century ago by Louis and Mary Leakey, seeking the fossil records to the roots of humankind. She has worked at the National Museums of Kenya since 1969, including as the head of the paleontology department, and is a research professor at Stony Brook University, New York. She is the recipient of several honorary degrees, has been elected an honorary fellow of the Geological Society of London, inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, was a National Geographic explorer-in-residence, served as a fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, and received the National Geographic Society Hubbard Medal, among many other accolades and achievements. She is also an author of numerous groundbreaking scientific publications in prestigious journals and of several monographs documenting her research. SAMIRA LEAKEY obtained a BA in politics with first-class honours from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London and a master’s degree in public administration from Princeton University. Samira worked at the World Bank in Washington, DC, and now lives in Nairobi with her daughter.