Richard Leakey quotes - page 2

Of the range of images in Upper Paleolithic art, the most arresting are the therianthropes. There are not many... but they seize the imagination. The most famous is the so-called sorcerer... In a manner unusual for Upper Paleolithic images, the sorcerer is staring directly out of the wall, a full-face stare that transfixes the spectator. (Richard Leakey)
Next to the discovery of the Turkana boy, the visit to Lascaux ranks as one of the great moments of my life. View quote
Richard Leakey
In order to be able to deceive intentionally, an animal must have a sense of how its actions appear to another individual. Such an ability requires self-awareness. View quote
Richard Leakey
It is impossible to imagine existence in the absence of subjective sensation we call reflective consciousness. View quote
Richard Leakey
Where Breuil has seen chaos-or at least, randomness-in wall art, Leroi-Gourhan sought and found order. View quote
Richard Leakey
The painted, engraved, and carved images of prehistory are threads from past cultures, and we are foreigners trying to interpret their meaning. Perhaps more than anything else, art can be fully understood only in the context of the culture that produced it. View quote
Richard Leakey
When our ancestors discovered the trick of consistently producing sharp stone flakes, it constituted a major breakthrough in human prehistory. ...The modest flake... is a highly effective implement for cutting through all but the toughest of hides... the humans who made and used these simple stone flakes thereby availed themselves of a new energy source-animal protein. View quote
Richard Leakey
Dots are just one example of an element in Lascaux art, and in all cave art... This is a profusion of nonrepresentational, geometric patterns. In addition to dots, there are grids and chevrons, curves and zigzags, and more. ...The coincidence of these geometric motifs with representational images is one of the most puzzling aspects of Upper Paleolithic art. ...images, six different kinds in all, are shimmering, incandescent, mercurial-and powerful. Called entoptic images-which means "within vision"-these phenomena are products of the basic neural architecture of the human brain. View quote
Richard Leakey
The question... is whether Upper Paleolithic art bears the telltale signs of Lewis-Williams' three stage neuropsychological model, and could thus be shamanistic art. View quote
Richard Leakey
Because the art of Africa was on rock shelters, not deep in caves, as in Europe, the ravages of time have eroded most of a rich expression. What we now see is the merest glimpse of what was on the minds of these people. View quote
Richard Leakey
I think both Louis and I were looking for more or less the same thing, and that is, when did our species, Homo, begin? (Richard Leakey)
To investigate the history of man's development, the most important finds are, of course, hominid fossils. View quote
Richard Leakey
We hope to find more pieces of the puzzle which will shed light on the connection between this upright, walking ape, our early ancestor, and modern man. View quote
Richard Leakey
Earlier, 100,000 elephants lived in Kenya and we didn't have any noteworthy problem with it. The problem that we have is not that there are now more elephants. View quote
Richard Leakey
Paleoanthropology is not a science that ends with the discovery of a bone. One has to have the original to work with. It is a life-long task. View quote
Richard Leakey
The problem is that during the 1980s, a decade of heavy poaching, the elephants retreated to safer areas. And now people have moved into the corridors once used by the elephants. View quote
Richard Leakey
The elephants were being slaughtered in masses. Some were even killed in the vicinity of big tourist hotels. View quote
Richard Leakey
Scientific innovations continually provide us with new means of analyzing the finds. View quote
Richard Leakey
Sadly, I am not able to take part in the fieldwork myself so much anymore, as both of my legs were amputated following an airplane crash twelve years ago. View quote
Richard Leakey
It is virtually impossible to control Northern Kenya, which is populated chiefly by migrant nomads. View quote
Richard Leakey
For fossils to thrive, certain favorable circumstances are required. First of all, of course, remnants of life have to be there. These then need to be washed over with water as soon as possible, so that the bones are covered with a layer of sediment. (Richard Leakey)
Along the borders to Ethiopia and Somalia, anarchy reigns, the police and military have retreated quite some distance. View quote
Richard Leakey
Protecting elephants and conserving natural ecosystems remain my personal priorities. But I am not so sure this would be so were I ill, hungry, and living in dispair. ...We must somehow find a way to provide for our own species if we are also to preserve others. View quote
Richard Leakey
Leroi-Gourhan surveyed more than sixty caves and saw order in the distribution of their images. Deer... often appeared in entranceways but were uncommon in main chambers. Horse, bison, and ox were the predominant creatures of the main chambers. Carnivores mostly occurred deep in the cave system. View quote
Richard Leakey
The first era of the Upper Paleolithic, the Aurignacian, is notable for several reasons, one of which is the absence of painted caves. ...One of the most evocative pieces from this era, from the Abri Blanchard in southwestern France, is a flute. Music must have been an integral part of Upper Paleolithic life too. View quote
Richard Leakey