Leakey, Louis and Mary

For louis and mary leakey, the question of humanity's nature is precisely related to human origins. Humanity has a scientific definition, a definition that is directly connected to humanity's evolution and its manipulation of the environment. According to Louis Leakey, “during the slow course of physical evolution it would be impossible to say positively ‘this is where the pre-human creature ceased to be sub-human and became a man’ unless we have an agreed definition of what we mean by man.” For this reason Louis Leakey defined man simply as a “creature belonging to the primate stock which had reached a stage where it actually made tools, as distinct from merely using suitable natural objects as tools.”

There are two astonishing things about this definition. First, it ...