Today, August 7th, is Louis S.B Leakeys Birthday! On this day we celebrate and commemorate the fantastical man that we know to be Louis Leakey.

The patriarch of the Fossil Hunting Dynasty, and inspiration for the foundation and continued research and exploration of The Leakey Foundation.

The man who started the great studies of the Great Apes, our closest relatives, including Jane Goodall, who’s studies continue, Diane Fossey, who unfortunately met an untimely and violent end, as well as Biruté Galdika.

Born on August 7, 1903 in Kabete, Kenya to a British family, Louis grew up learning how to play, survive and learn the ways of the African savannas.

He was educated at the University of Cambridge and began his archaeological research in East Africa in 1924; he was later aided by his second wife, the archaeologist Mary Douglas Leakey (née Nicol), and their sons.

He held various appointments at major British and American universities and was curator of the Coryndon Memorial Museum in Nairobi from 1945 to 1961.

The work of The Leakey Foundation is of great importance to modern man, as well as our future and our place in nature. The Leakey Foundation funds, and provides grants to early-career researchers, post-docs, and other paleoanthropologists! With your help, I am hoping we can raise a few hundred dollars to donate to this organization.

If you care about where we, as a species comes from, and where we are going, donate today, even $1 can be of great help. And if you can’t donate? Just share this post. Thank you, everyone. On behalf of Anthropologists everywhere!And a very happy birthday to Louis Leakey!

You can donate directly to The Leakey Foundation here:

If possible, it would be great if you can mentioned where you were referred from!

Thanks so much for the continued support and dedication! We are hoping to do so much going forward, and we are so excited to take you along with us!

Never Stop Learning!!!

With the great success of my other recent post, the Top Modern Paleoanthropology Books, I thought it would be cool, to extend this further. This week, we will be doing Top Documentaries, next week we will do Top Lectures, that one will be really hard to make!

So here we have Top Documentaries to watch! The links that will be provided work for the United States, and may not work in your country, but if you search for the name of the documentary that I will provide below, you should be able to find it, and enjoy it.

None of these documentaries are perfect, or explain everything. Some are even very specific. But all of them hold value and merit in their own right.

So when you have some spare time, if you are looking into learning the basics of Paleoanthropology, check out these documentaries below!

Once again, these are in no particular order, but I think they should all be watched, and enjoyed, then from there you can go off to related videos and channels and find so much more!

Education can be accessible if you know where to looK!

1. The Dawn of Human History | Mankind: The Story of All of Us (S1, E1) | Full Episode | History
2. NOVA Science Documentary – Dawn of Humanity
3. Evolution Of Modern Humans Documentary 2017 FULL HD NEW
4. BBC Origins of Us 1 of 3 – Bones HDTV – Dr Alice Roberts
5. A Neanderthal Perspective on Human Origins – 2014
6. Becoming Human First Steps HD
7. BBC Planet of the Apemen Battle for Earth 1of2 Homo Erectus PDTV XviD AC3 MVGroup org
8. The Oldest Human Ancestor Uncovered | First Human | Timeline
9. Evolution Narrated by Liam Neeson(full documentary)HD
10. Lucy IN SEARCH OF HUMAN ORIGINS PART ONE

So there you go! Please go enjoy and learn! If you know of, or have other favorite documentaries that are open access, let us know by commenting below or emailing me at worldofpaleoanthropology@gmail.com!

Suggested Reading List for Paleoanthropology Enthusiasts!
These are in no particular order but are all great, modern books on the subject that, at the time of their publication (which I am only listing recent books) were the most updated at the time.

Check out our audiobook list!

Of course, the thing about our field is that it is ever-changing and what we know and learn changes every day!

So please, if you’re interested, check out these books by these awesome authors, researchers, and professors!

Many of them we have had on our show, and you can find our interviews on our Youtube Channel! (Just search, World for Paleoanthropology on YT).

1. Almost Human by Lee Berger and John Hawks
2. 7 Skeletons by Lydia Pyne
3. Sediments of Time by Meave Leakey
4. First Steps by Jeremy DeSilva
5. Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional by Agustin Fuentes
6. A Most Interesting Problem edited by Jeremy DeSilva
7. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
8. The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal by Jared Diamond
9. Kindred by Rebecca Wragg-Sykes
10. Lone Survivor: How We Came to Be the Only Humans on Earth by Chris Stringer

There are of course plenty more, and just because some books are a little older, does not mean they are not filled with great and valuable information! Some of my favorite books are about Lucy, and Olduvai, the Leakeys, etc. It may not be the most updated info, but it’s important for a strong foundation, so be sure to check those out too!
For now, this should be a good, up to date and modern list of books that will get you started, educate you (hopefully), and help you on your path to learning about Human’s Deep History.

What are your suggested reads? Comment below (include a link to be super helpful!)
Enjoy!

Seth Chagi

Join myself and Dr. Marina Elliott today as we sit down and discuss some awesome topics. From her stunning travels, work and involvement in the 2013 Rising Star Expedition.

A proud female STEM educator and promoter, Dr. Elliot has written a detail book on the localities all over the Cradle of Human Kind in South Africa,(you can purchase it here.) and is featured, along with many other extraordinary women, in a new book published by National Geographic for Kids called Girls Can! You can grab a copy here.

We had a great chat, and cant wait for you to see it, enjoy it, and hopefully learn a great deal about Dr. Elliott and her work, and discover the amazing tale of Homo naledi!

Enjoy

We had the great pleasure of interviewing Dr. Sáez the other day and we had a blast!

We learned alot from talking to him and we hope you can glean some of that yourself by watching!

From Neanderthals to the Complete Human Package, we discuss his book, his work, and his views on Anthropology.

Check out our latest interview here, and please like and comment if you enjoy =)

If you would like to be on the show, contact us at worldofpaleoanthropology@gmail.com

Hello fellow enthusiasts, students, professors, and more!

Join us today for an amazing talk on Neanderthals and so much more, listen to an if not the world’s leading experts on Neanderthals for the past 40 years!
Learn all about Neanderthals and more in this great interview!

To watch the rest of our interviews, check out our YouTube channel and our website at http://www.worldofpaleoanthropology.org.

If you would like to appear on our show, email Seth at worldofpaleoanthropology@gmail.com!

So! I now have an account on Academia.edu, which is AWESOME! It was a graduation present and I am very happy!

I have two papers up, both of which came from this website, the best one and one id love opinions on is this one:

There will be no changes to this website, any articles and posts will be made here, blog posts and such etc. if its worthy, it will also go on the Academia account, but EVERYTHING will still be here on this website.

Be sure to check out all our interviews, book reviews and articles!

If you want to get involved email me at worldofpaleoanthropology@gmail.com and we can see what we can get going!

Have a great evening!

Well, its time for another book review! There are just so many great books out there that have been published in the last year, let alone decade and beyond. Recently I created a “Top 5 Books” list, that you can view here. But today we are going to be talking about one book in particular, and a mighty fine book at that.

This book, like many books on Human Evolution goes over the basics of Human Origins, explaining our ever so complicated braided stream of a family of hominids all the way to modern day runners. The thing that this book does so differently than other books on Human Origins, is that it is almost exclusively viewed by one point of view. And that is that of Upright Walking.

Bipedalism is something that we only find in Modern Humans, we are not the only humans or humanoid species to do it, not by far, but we are the last mammal to do so. This, to us at least, makes us feel special, we think it makes us unique and different from all other beasts of the land.

And maybe it does. There are many theories on how Bipedalism first came about, whether we started in the trees, or eventually adapted to move in and out of them, its a complicated story. But Jerry does a great job of exploring multiple hypothesis without showing bias towards one or another. For the most part, there are some ideas out there that are just too other worldly to consider.

Jerry DeSilva goes to great lengths to help the reader understand that we, are a product of our biology, which has evolved over millions of years to make us bipedal. While he does not know the answer that, or at least not yet, he definitely is on the right track, and is brining all of us along the journey with him.

“First Steps” by Jeremy DeSilva is a very digestible, intellectual and well sourced book on how upright walking made us human. You will learn a lot from this book, about things you may or may not have been expecting. But as with his other recent title released, “A Most Interesting Problem, What Darwin’s Decent of Man Got Right and Wrong about Human Evolution” we begin to see where Professor Desilva’s mind is, and it is a glorious place to be.

Do yourself a favor, if you want to learn about why we walk upright, what makes us different from other animals, or plainly what makes us Human, grab your copy here.

Check out our interview with Prof. DeSilva here!