Richard Leakey

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty one, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:26

This week, our castaway is the paleoanthropologist, Richard Leakey.

Presenter0:31

Richard, how much does music mean to you?

Richard Leakey0:33

Yeah.

Richard Leakey0:33

Very, very little in the strict sense, because

Richard Leakey0:37

The greatest sound of all to me is natural silence, the silence that you get on the open plains of Africa, in the deserts of Africa, in the forests of Africa. There's not really a silence, because there are

Richard Leakey0:48

Very subtle sounds as the sound of the wind in the grass or the trees.

Richard Leakey0:53

There's the distant sound of birds or insects, and sometimes the sound of animals.

Richard Leakey0:58

It's a very loud noise in one sense.

Richard Leakey1:02

And so I don't see music as part of my life when I'm away from from uh cities and things.

Presenter1:07

So, when you're on a site, you don't bother to take discs or cassettes with you.

Richard Leakey1:11

Never at all. But when I come to cities it's a very different issue, because I find the silence of cities, the sounds of the cities, or the the lack of sound completely in these gate concrete buildings that you live in, very foreboding. And I do, if I take a flat in London or New York,

Richard Leakey1:30

yearn to have some attractive sounds, and I will then

Richard Leakey1:34

make use of a tape recorder or

Richard Leakey1:37

a record i if it's available. Have you any musical skill yourself? Do you sing or play an instrument? Absolutely none. None at all. I

Richard Leakey1:46

I'm laughed at by my family for my complete ignorance about music. Well, what's the first record you've chosen? Well, the first record is.

Richard Leakey1:54

Mozart, it's the violin concerto, number five by Yehudi Menoun.

Speaker 22:00

Yeah.

Presenter2:58

Part of the first movement of Mozart's violin concerto number five, the Turkish concerto,

Presenter3:05

Yehudi Manuin with the Bath Festival Chamber Orchestra.

Presenter3:09

Now, you live in Kenya. You are, in fact, a citizen of Kenya. You were born there.

Richard Leakey3:13

You will warn me.

Presenter3:16

Now your parents, Louis and Mary Leakey, were two very celebrated paleoanthropologists. Your your father was also a Kenyan. Yes, he was born there as well.

Presenter3:27

I believe it was nineteen twenty six when he started his search for traces of early man.

Presenter3:32

and quite a number of years before he found anything really, really exciting.

Richard Leakey3:38

Yes. He made a number of very important discoveries, but they were important only in the the context of the time they were made. They didn't get the international publicity and excitement that that he had in the latter stages of his life.

Richard Leakey3:51

He was looking for the earliest man, he was looking for the true origin, he was looking for, as he said in one of his books,

Richard Leakey3:59

Adam's ancestors. And this to to him was the most important thing. And it wasn't until really nineteen fifty nine that they got their first dramatic evidence.

Presenter4:08

There was a long time. Now he was appointed director of the National Museum in Nairobi. That's a post that you hold.

Richard Leakey4:14

Yeah. Yeah.

Presenter4:14

Yeah.

Richard Leakey4:14

Yes, he took it on just after the war. He had been closely involved with the museum. He used to take his specimens in, and he used to know all the people there.

Richard Leakey4:22

It was nineteen forty seven that he took over as curator they weren't called directors then and he ran it as curator from nineteen forty seven until nineteen sixty two when he resigned.

Richard Leakey4:34

to give himself more time to pursue his research and to raise money for his research.

Presenter4:39

It's grown very much, I should think. I I see that you've got four hundred people on your staff. That means there's a lot going on.

Richard Leakey4:47

Yes, when I took it over in nineteen sixty nine the I had a staff of twenty three. I now have a staff of just over four hundred. It's grown out of all proportion, but of course not just a museum we're in charge of.

Richard Leakey4:58

The antiquities in the country, the monuments, the sites. Uh it's it's quite a large operation.

Richard Leakey5:03

And it's a job I enjoy very much, although it does keep me.

Richard Leakey5:07

perhaps more at my desk than I would

Richard Leakey5:09

Choose if I am preparing for your trip.

Presenter5:11

Now your parents had three children, three boys. Did they take you three on their exp

Richard Leakey5:17

Additions.

Presenter5:17

Yeah.

Richard Leakey5:18

Sometimes, but not always, we were

Richard Leakey5:20

in a position where we had to go to school, which is always a sadness of any youth, I think. Um also they were working in rather remote places at times where water and food was very hard to come by, and if they were working in a place where water was scarce, we weren't taken, because they felt

Richard Leakey5:34

that giving a cup of water to useless hands was a waste of water. If there was plenty of water and there was food that could be shot and gathered, then we were taken, and we went to many extraordinary places as children.

Presenter5:46

So, willy-nilly, you all three grew up to know quite a lot about fossils and about

Presenter5:51

Pairly anthropology.

Richard Leakey5:53

Oh yes, it was it was a very charged atmosphere of of academia and

Richard Leakey5:58

research and science and and we all absorbed a lot from that.

Richard Leakey6:02

Let's have your second record. What's that?

Presenter6:04

Yeah.

Richard Leakey6:04

Well, the second record I'd like to play is is curiously, and perhaps people will be surprised, but it is the Kenya National Anthem.

Richard Leakey6:10

I feel very strongly that I am a Kenyan and that Kenya

Richard Leakey6:14

offers great hope for many people, and I feel very proud to belong, and of course

Richard Leakey6:19

In Kenya we used to hear your national anthem so often, I'm sure it's good for you to hear ours from time to time.

Speaker 26:25

O God of all creation, blessed is our land and nation. Justice be our shield and defender. May we dwell in unity, peace and liberty. Plenty be found within our borders.

Richard Leakey6:29

With feelings of ant and vision

Speaker 16:32

Shong, justice be our shift.

Speaker 16:43

Entity farm within our borders

Speaker 26:47

Let one adorn our eyes with our strong and true.

Speaker 16:51

With hearts for strong and true.

Speaker 26:56

Service the only demo and the homeland of Kenya Heritage of splendour for me with time to give

Speaker 16:56

Some is the only one

Presenter7:09

The Kenyan National Anthem sung in English.

Presenter7:13

Richardson, Facts about Early Man. Now, bones don't last, bones crumble away, so anything that's found has to be a fossil. What exactly is a fossil? How is it formed?

Richard Leakey7:24

Well, a fossil is a bone, or a fossil is the remains of some other organic material that has had a mineral change take place. What happens in in the case of a bone is the organics are replaced by the inorganics.

Richard Leakey7:36

And something that that is a bone to day will be a stone when it's a fossil, and it retains its original shape in many cases. It retains much of its original structure, and you can learn a tremendous amount from looking at that. The process of fossilization is

Richard Leakey7:51

dependent upon the the right

Richard Leakey7:54

Chemical environment for this process to happen, and it often doesn't happen.

Richard Leakey7:59

One of our my particularly great frustrations

Richard Leakey8:02

Because all too often the fossil record is incomplete.

Richard Leakey8:06

Because the chemicals were wrong and the bones just didn't get preserved, no matter how much we would like them to have been, they're not there.

Richard Leakey8:13

And of course I I

Presenter8:13

I suppose a very important thing in in in your field is carbon dating. Now for the first time, you've got some fossils, you've got some fragments, and you can for the first time

Presenter8:24

estimate with reasonable accuracy how well

Richard Leakey8:27

Yeah.

Presenter8:27

Yeah.

Richard Leakey8:27

Well calm dating has its limitations. It doesn't go back.

Richard Leakey8:30

with any accuracy, much beyond sixty thousand years, although now in England

Richard Leakey8:35

They're people pioneering a technique that'll take it back to at least a hundred, if not a hundred and fifty thousand years.

Richard Leakey8:41

But my interest is much earlier than that. I mean, you're dealing with modern man at a hundred thousand years, and I I'm really interested in all that comes before.

Richard Leakey8:48

So we date with a technique that is similar in concept.

Richard Leakey8:52

But it's a dating technique known as potassium argon. It's basically a technique that depends on

Richard Leakey8:58

the presence of certain elements that decay radioactively over a known period of time to produce

Richard Leakey9:05

isotopes of something else. And what you you require is a volcanic material.

Richard Leakey9:10

where certain elements or crystals have certain things in them that decay and you you measure the the proportion of one to the other and you come up with very precise states. But it's not something I do, good heavens, I just send the rocks to the experts.

Presenter9:26

Now after toiling for years your your parents

Presenter9:29

made some important finds. What did they find? Of what date? I mean, let's keep this in the family for the time being.

Richard Leakey9:35

Well, within the family, I guess our family uh fame, if you like I hate the word, but our f our family

Richard Leakey9:42

Notoriety

Richard Leakey9:44

Really got on no way.

Richard Leakey9:46

from about nineteen fifty nine.

Richard Leakey9:49

This was when my mother discovered at the Alder Vygorg in Tanzania

Richard Leakey9:53

A skull.

Richard Leakey9:55

of a prehistoric human that lived one and three quarter million years ago at the Alderby Gorge.

Richard Leakey10:00

And at that time, for whatever reasons, the world was ready for a missing link. It was ready for a dramatic announcement, even though similar things had been known elsewhere, from South Africa.

Richard Leakey10:10

This one

Richard Leakey10:12

caught the fancy and the attention of the Western world, and it got incredible public

Presenter10:16

Did anyone realize that man was as far back?

Richard Leakey10:22

Got it.

Richard Leakey10:24

No, I think that was perhaps the cause of the excitement, although man was known to be ape like in its early stages.

Richard Leakey10:31

This was the first time that such a fossil had been found in strata that could be dated by potassium algae and the technique itself had only just been developed.

Richard Leakey10:39

Fossils in South Africa didn't come from areas where there were volcanic materials, and so couldn't be dated by this technique. So this was the first dated ancestor, and an age of one and three quarter million years was quite extraordinary, and amazed everybody, and from that point on

Richard Leakey10:54

The publicity that went with it made it quite easy for my father to raise money, which enabled them to go back for longer periods of time, and of course, with more money and more time, more fossils.

Richard Leakey11:05

Another record, please.

Richard Leakey11:06

Yes, I'm going to ask here for you to play the theme tune of South Pacific, and I do this because.

Richard Leakey11:13

It really comes at a time in my life when I was beginning to become aware of myself as an individual.

Richard Leakey11:19

I saw the film as a teenager at a time when I was very prickly about being my father's son.

Richard Leakey11:26

And it really reminds me of the stage in life where I

Richard Leakey11:30

started to think about a career.

Presenter12:01

The overture from the sound track of South Pacific.

Presenter12:06

Right now, going back to your early days, Richard, did you take it for granted that you were going to succeed your father?

Richard Leakey12:14

No, and I still don't. To succeed such a great man would be very presumptuous. Why do you want to be? Well, as a child I didn't know what I wanted to be. As a teenager

Presenter12:18

I want a bunch of

Richard Leakey12:23

I still didn't know what I wanted to be, except that I knew I wanted to be somebody. I was I was very aware of the advantages of being known.

Richard Leakey12:30

I could see very clearly how my father could get his own way, who could

Richard Leakey12:37

uh do battle with people he didn't agree with, who could go places and do things because he was famous. And this appealed to me very much. And I I I had an ego that I still have, that's that is a problem sometimes. But I was very aware of that and I was concerned with the idea of

Richard Leakey12:53

trying to develop my own stature, my own reputation, my own position,

Richard Leakey12:58

in the shadow of my father, because there's no doubt he was well known and a famous man.

Richard Leakey13:03

And so I thought the best way to get out of his shadow was to get out of his business, and so

Richard Leakey13:08

At the time when I could have gone on to university, done my A levels and and studied,

Richard Leakey13:12

I made the conscious decision not to do so, because this way I could get well removed from this this grand ship that was sailing so well in the great oceans. So what did you take up?

Richard Leakey13:24

Well, nothing very, uh

Richard Leakey13:26

Very dramatic.

Richard Leakey13:28

started to exploit my father immediately. His fame I had the same name, and so I offered myself as a guide.

Richard Leakey13:35

I was prepared to take people round East Africa and show them the sights, the game.

Richard Leakey13:40

prepared to be the sort of heroic

Richard Leakey13:42

leader of safaris with a bush jacket imager.

Richard Leakey13:46

A lot of people immediately jumped at the opportunity, because Lewis, my father, was so famous, they assumed that I must be.

Richard Leakey13:52

uh related and and they were getting as close to the great man as they could. They were appalled to find an eighteen year old in charge of their safari. But by then it was too late. I had their deposit and we were off. And I never lost anybody, got close to it several times.

Richard Leakey14:05

And end up

Richard Leakey14:07

Having quite a good time on many occasions,

Richard Leakey14:09

But then I began to tire. I found it

Richard Leakey14:13

Didn't suit my ego to be somebody's servant, which basically you are if you are tour guide, and all I made some wonderful friends

Richard Leakey14:20

Some people put me off it.

Presenter14:21

So you got out of the safari business and followed your father.

Presenter14:26

What did you have to do? Did you have to go and get academic qualifications first?

Richard Leakey14:30

No, because it didn't start. I mean, it should have started like that, but it didn't. I really got out of the safari business, but stayed in the bush, and I found that

Richard Leakey14:38

One way to do this was to go and look for fossils, and my father would give me money and go and prospect this site, or go and look at that site, and off I'd go and have a marvellous time.

Richard Leakey14:46

But then I started to have ego problems again, because I had to take scientists with me.

Richard Leakey14:50

And although I often found things, and showed em where things were to be found, and ran the excavations and the expedition, when it came to writing the papers that everybody gets kudos from,

Richard Leakey14:59

I was only mentioned in the footnote acknowledgments to Richard Leakey for a superb organizational job.

Richard Leakey15:05

Well this didn't really please me very much, and so

Richard Leakey15:08

About nineteen sixty four, sixty five.

Richard Leakey15:11

I thought, no, no, no, no, no, we have to do better than this. Let me go to university. So I shot off to England.

Richard Leakey15:17

went up to Cambridge.

Richard Leakey15:18

Saw the master of my father's college and said, I'd like to enrol. And he said, Well, what are your qualifications? And I said, Well,

Richard Leakey15:26

What do you mean? I fly aeroplanes and I've been doing all sorts of things and he said, Well, do you have A levels? And I said, No, I don't. So he said, Well, come back if you get

Richard Leakey15:34

So I was rather annoyed, rather embarrassed.

Richard Leakey15:37

They're rather stubborn, and I went and got them. I went to a crammer in London.

Richard Leakey15:42

worked quite hard.

Richard Leakey15:44

Hated it?

Richard Leakey15:45

got what was needed.

Richard Leakey15:47

Had to go back to Kenya.

Richard Leakey15:48

Having got back to Kenning, I thought, Na that's enough books for me for a lifetime. Thank you, Cambridge, and no, I'm not going to apply, and so I didn't go back to it.

Presenter15:57

So you're one of the foremost men in your branch of very specialized science, and all you've got is a couple of A levels. That's marvellous.

Richard Leakey16:05

Well, I'm a a specialist at back door entry.

Presenter16:07

Uh

Presenter16:08

Had you an idea, a special idea of a site you wanted to look at?

Presenter16:12

No.

Richard Leakey16:13

I had a special idea.

Richard Leakey16:16

of a site that nobody else had looked at, which is slightly different and more subtle if you're dealing with somebody of my complexity. I wanted to go somewhere my father had never been, and he was a well travelled man, and there were very few places left in East Africa that he hadn't looked at.

Richard Leakey16:32

One place he hadn't looked at was Lake Turkana.

Richard Leakey16:34

Neither the north in detail, nor the east in particular.

Richard Leakey16:39

And I had the opportunity to do that and that's really where I've built my own career.

Presenter16:44

Why did that look particular?

Richard Leakey16:45

Very promising. Did you survey it from the air? I saw it from the air. It was a chance sighting. I was flying over there in nineteen sixty seven on my way to Ethiopia.

Presenter16:47

I s

Richard Leakey16:54

Notice the geological strata.

Richard Leakey16:56

Noticed that it was totally inaccessible, virtually impossible to get at. There were tremendous security problems at the time with border raiders and bandits but geologically it looked very interesting.

Presenter17:07

In your view, what's the most important and exciting discovery made so far in Africa?

Richard Leakey17:11

Yeah.

Richard Leakey17:13

I don't think there's one. I think it would be very misleading to isolate one specimen. We have many specimens, but I think the most.

Richard Leakey17:20

Intriguing evidence, and perhaps the most uh significant, is that Homo Erectus, that speaking man, which was thought to be Asiatic.

Speaker 117:27

Interesting.

Richard Leakey17:28

In origin.

Richard Leakey17:30

is now known at an earlier date in Africa.

Richard Leakey17:33

which confirms the supposition

Richard Leakey17:37

That and the prediction.

Richard Leakey17:39

That Homo was African, that man is African, and that it was Homo erectus that left Africa to populate the world, and that the first African export, if you like, was man ourselves. How far back?

Richard Leakey17:54

I think the departure from Africa was somewhere between one and a half and two million years ago.

Presenter17:58

Now these people, these creatures, we know their height, their weight, roughly how much their brains weighed and all the rest of it. But what do we know about them? Can we conjecture whether they were nomads, hunters, vegetarian, monogamous, aggressive? I mean, can you tell anything from

Presenter18:15

These

Presenter18:16

Tracy

Richard Leakey18:17

If we can tell a lot, uh the questions that you ask are the questions we ask. Uh, we would love to answer all of them, but we have to be truthful and we can only answer some of them and then only in part. But

Richard Leakey18:30

By looking at the fossil bones, you can in fact reconstruct the physical structure, the the stature, the size, the weight, as you say.

Richard Leakey18:39

The behavior is more difficult, and we can only do that if these ancestors left things behind that tell us something about the behavior. Fortunately they did, and we find archaeological traces, we find stone implements.

Richard Leakey18:50

We find stone implements associated with broken remains of animal refuse, of food that was eaten.

Richard Leakey18:56

We find it in such a pattern, and it's possible to interpret it quite accurately,

Richard Leakey19:02

To the point where we can say these people came back to one place daily. They occupied a home base for a period of time.

Richard Leakey19:09

By looking at the quantity of material that has accumulated and the character of the material that has accumulated, you can get a some idea of the possible size of the group that was living there.

Richard Leakey19:18

Then you have to go, of course, to questions about their hunting skills. But there are people in Africa, for example, the people in South America, who are still living the hunter gatherer economy.

Richard Leakey19:28

And you can go to these people, and you can ask them why do you do what you do? How effective is it? What in fact are you doing? And from that you can open up a tremendous understanding.

Richard Leakey19:39

Of the real heritage of mankind.

Richard Leakey19:43

We got to record number four.

Richard Leakey19:46

Well there's one

Richard Leakey19:47

I have no choice but to ask for the theme song of the film Lawrence of Arabia.

Richard Leakey19:54

My first explorations of Lake Turkana, the deserts of Turkana, were by Camel, and being somewhat of a romantic

Richard Leakey20:02

Nothing tells me more about this romance that I enjoyed than this particular music.

Presenter20:37

The main theme from the film, Lawrence of Arabia.

Presenter20:41

Now your grandfather was a missionary, or father had ideas of becoming a missionary too. Can this slow animal like plodding towards some sort of maturity, which we're now discovering that man has done for

Presenter20:55

two, three million years. Can that elide with what we know of religion?

Richard Leakey21:02

Yes, I don't see why not.

Richard Leakey21:04

But I think what one has to say is that

Richard Leakey21:07

The knowledge of what we are.

Richard Leakey21:09

the complete knowledge of what we are.

Richard Leakey21:11

is

Richard Leakey21:12

Theology is all about. It's the part of the definition of theology.

Richard Leakey21:17

I have spent a lot of my life, particularly in the last few years, talking to people who are concerned

Richard Leakey21:23

With the development of thinking on religion, not only Christian religion, which is just one religion, but other religions as well.

Richard Leakey21:30

And there is no doubt that the intellectual side of religion, the thinking part of religion, the leadership of religion,

Richard Leakey21:36

is generally quite at ease and indeed very supportive of what we're doing. Some of the most famous paleontologists who study the origin of life have in fact been Jesuits, and some of the greatest contributions to science has come through the Church. So I don't think it's so much that it can't accommodate. I think what is difficult to accommodate

Richard Leakey21:54

is the teaching.

Richard Leakey21:55

And I think we have to be careful to instruct in theological school and in religious school.

Richard Leakey22:01

The New Interpretation

Richard Leakey22:03

Let's get back to

Presenter22:04

Meals

Richard Leakey22:04

Well, this one I would like to

Richard Leakey22:07

To ask again, I'm people listening to this are gonna be worried that I just go to movies all the time, but this is Doctor Giivago, the film.

Richard Leakey22:14

It's again the opening theme tune.

Richard Leakey22:17

It's a film that

Richard Leakey22:18

impressed me greatly and it's a film that

Richard Leakey22:21

I found really quite emotional.

Presenter22:46

Lara's theme from the film Doctor Zhivago.

Presenter22:50

You have undertaken to tell the story of mankind from the time when he hived off from the lower creatures, whenever that may have been.

Presenter22:57

In a television series, The Making of Mankind, which is being shown at the moment. How big a project was this? How long did it take?

Richard Leakey23:06

It took a number of years. It was an idea that was first thought of by myself.

Richard Leakey23:13

as a series in nineteen seventy six

Presenter23:19

Yeah.

Richard Leakey23:22

In nineteen seventy seven I discussed it with the the powers that be who make these decisions in the BBC.

Richard Leakey23:28

And there was a lot of interest and a lot of enthusiasm for this idea. And so nineteen seventy seven, seventy eight we developed the scripts, the outline, the ideas.

Richard Leakey23:38

We sought the funding not only from the BBC coffers, but also from co-production coffers Time Life in America.

Richard Leakey23:45

And we were ready to go, really, in nineteen seventy nine, and we were we were all set to start filming in July of seventy nine. In fact, we did start filming

Richard Leakey23:53

But I wasn't with them. I was here in England in hospital. That held things up quite a long time. Well, it meant that I had to catch up when I came out of hospital, and so although the project has been filmed over two years,

Richard Leakey24:05

Part of it was filmed without me and we've had to sort of double track and go back to places where I needed to be on screen. And as usual, the there's a book to go with the series.

Speaker 224:09

Mm-hmm.

Richard Leakey24:15

Yes, the book is is out now, and it's uh

Richard Leakey24:19

follows quite closely the series, it's a permanent record, and it goes perhaps a little more deeply into the issues that the series can't, because it's uh seven hours is not long enough, and we don't want to bore you.

Richard Leakey24:30

But uh it it does follow it very closely and will be a good souvenir of the series.

Richard Leakey24:35

Another record. Number six, we've got to. Yes, this one I'm going to ask for is Sibelius. It's the.

Richard Leakey24:41

Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra.

Richard Leakey24:44

And it's Finlandia. And I choose this because I first heard it when I was in Sweden a few years ago.

Richard Leakey24:51

It was played to me by the wife of

Richard Leakey24:54

Professor Gustaf, Karl Gustaf.

Richard Leakey24:57

Huh?

Richard Leakey24:58

was at that time the secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy as well as the secretary to the Nobel Committee.

Richard Leakey25:05

And

Richard Leakey25:07

At that time I was in Sweden to discuss the first Nobel Symposium on human origins, and the fact that they were discussing this with me suggested

Richard Leakey25:17

that the science had matured, that Nobel and the Royal Swedish Academy, the pinnacle of scientific recognition, were at last talking about my subject, and, more importantly, talking with me.

Presenter26:22

The closing passage of Finlandia played by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra.

Presenter26:28

Like every form of intellectual endeavour, setting up anthropological expeditions is very expensive. Now, who pays?

Presenter26:35

Yeah.

Richard Leakey26:35

Different people pay for different parts of it, but in my case I now get a most of my support from Kenya, the Kenya Government, through the museum.

Richard Leakey26:43

Has quite a generous budget for this sort of work, and the Kenya Government attaches a great deal of importance to the work that's being done and the results of the work, and it gives, I think.

Richard Leakey26:52

Kenya and Kenyans a feeling of pride that we are

Richard Leakey26:56

centre stage in one important branch of science, and it's not so much me, but the country and the participation of many of us in this, and I I'm merely a spokesman in this context.

Speaker 126:58

Said the

Presenter26:59

Uh

Presenter27:05

Of course the expeditions are

Presenter27:07

of very varying sizes. I mean you'll get a a big one that'll go out on the territory for a long, long time.

Presenter27:14

How many men ordinarily?

Richard Leakey27:16

operate. Well, my own project, which is a big one.

Richard Leakey27:19

Been now operating since nineteen sixty eight at Turkana.

Richard Leakey27:24

The average size of the expedition is thirty to forty people. And there are chaps there the whole time. And we keep people year round now at Lake Turkana because of the size of the project. We have laboratories there, we have scientists coming in at different times of the year.

Presenter27:29

And we gotta keep

Richard Leakey27:37

This is costing

Richard Leakey27:39

Oh, I should think sixty to seventy thousand pounds a year.

Presenter27:42

Yeah. And that is a vital site. If something important is go very important is going to be found, it's as likely to turn up there as anywhere.

Richard Leakey27:49

I think Lake Takana has many secrets still to offer. Your wife works with you? Yes, my wife is a paleontologist. She has her degree in zoology, but she practises paleontology, yes. And you have three children, three daughters. I have three daughters. One by my first marriage and two with Meeve, and uh

Presenter28:04

The one by my

Speaker 128:04

Uh

Richard Leakey28:07

They come out with us, and they play games with bones as I did as a child.

Richard Leakey28:11

So they're going to follow the line you think possibly one or two of them at any rate?

Presenter28:15

Every

Richard Leakey28:15

I don't know. I imagine that it'll be easier for them, because they won't have the the very dark shadow that I had. I don't stand as tall as my father.

Presenter28:23

Your seventh record.

Richard Leakey28:25

This one I'm going to ask for a song from Kenya. It's uh a song known as the Mattendoni Wedding Song, and it's a song that is often sung with accompanying music in Lamu, an island.

Richard Leakey28:40

in the north coast of Kenya, where I spend a lot of my free time. I have a small beach house and I go there with my family to relax and

Richard Leakey28:49

This song will remind me on your island of a place I love very dearly and a people I love very dearly.

Presenter29:56

A song at a Maton Doni wedding.

Presenter29:59

You spend quite a lot of your life, of course, camping out in the wilderness.

Presenter30:03

There's not much new for you in the desert island problem.

Richard Leakey30:07

No, I I'd like to see it before I could confirm that, but I would imagine that a desert island is going to have a lot that'll be very, very interesting to us.

Presenter30:14

There's everything there that you need if you can make use of it. You could obviously improvise shelter. Oh, no problem at all. And you'd know to a certain extent what to eat and what not to eat. I think one could.

Richard Leakey30:25

learn very quickly by keeping one's eyes open.

Presenter30:27

Have you done any fishing?

Richard Leakey30:29

Yes, quite a lot of fishing.

Presenter30:30

Five minutes.

Richard Leakey30:30

For food, not for sp

Presenter30:31

Right. And I believe sailing's a hobby of yours. I love sailing.

Presenter30:36

Could you build a craft of some sort a primitive craft, a raft?

Richard Leakey30:39

Yeah.

Presenter30:39

Yeah.

Richard Leakey30:39

I'm sure I could if I wanted to, but I'm not sure that I'd want to, necessarily.

Presenter30:43

Would you try to

Richard Leakey30:44

Scroll.

Presenter30:45

I don't think so.

Presenter30:47

Let's have your last record.

Richard Leakey30:49

My last record is going to be taken from the Songs of the Humpback Whale, these extraordinary marine mammals that are so beautiful in their song deep down below the oceans. And I would do this because on your island or my island as I would insist it become

Richard Leakey31:06

I would like to know that there are intelligent mammals all around me.

Richard Leakey31:10

who are also happy in their solitude.

Speaker 231:39

Yeah.

Speaker 231:41

Uh

Speaker 231:46

Uh

Presenter31:50

The Song of a Humpback Whale recorded by Doctor Roger S. Payne.

Presenter31:56

Richard, if you could take only one disc out of the eight you've played lists, which would you choose? I think I would take the Song of the Wales.

Presenter32:02

and one luxury to take to the island with you, nothing of any practical use.

Richard Leakey32:07

I have found that the most difficult thing to think about, and I think if it were a luxury, it would be a pillow.

Richard Leakey32:14

Keep it dry.

Presenter32:15

Uh

Richard Leakey32:15

Yes, I like to put my head on something.

Presenter32:17

Yeah.

Richard Leakey32:17

Uh

Presenter32:17

And one book, The Bible and Shakespeare, are already there. Yeah.

Richard Leakey32:21

The book I would take is a book that you're probably not familiar with, but it's called Touch the Earth. Touch the Earth. What is it? It's a book that was compiled in America and it consists of a series of transcripts

Richard Leakey32:33

Of speeches made by the indigenous American, that's the Red Indian as you call them in the West.

Richard Leakey32:38

At times when they were negotiating and being negotiated with treaties for America.

Richard Leakey32:43

It's a book that contains more wisdom and more insight into the magnificence of the untampered human mind than anything I've ever read. Touch the Earth. Do you know who compiled it? I'm afraid I don't. But it it is available in the States. It's a little known book, but it must contain more wisdom than virtually any other book I know.

Presenter33:03

Right. Well look out for it. And thank you Richard Deakey for letting us hear your Desert Island disc. Thank you.

Richard Leakey33:09

Thank you for having me. I've enjoyed it.

Presenter33:10

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 133:18

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.