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Quote by Richard Leakey

“Humans become human through intense learning not just of survival skills but of customs and social mores, kinship and social laws-that is, culture.”

Quote by Richard Leakey

Author

Richard Leakey (born December 19, 1944) is a renowned Kenyan paleoanthropologist, politician, and environmental activist. As a member of the famous Leakey family, he continued the legacy of his parents, Louis and Mary Leakey, in discovering early human fossils in Africa. He served as director of the National Museums of Kenya and led excavations at Lake Turkana, uncovering significant fossils including the 'Turkana Boy.' He also held the position of director of the Kenya Wildlife Service, where he fought against ivory poaching and promoted conservation. His work has profoundly influenced the understanding of human origins and African wildlife protection. more

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“Natural selection operates according to immediate cirumstances and not toward a long-term goal. Homo sapiens did eventually evolve as a descendant of the first humans, but there was nothing inevitable about it.”

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“As every parent knows, children go through an adolescent growth spurt, during which they put on inches at an alarming rate. Humans are unique in this respect: most mammalian species, including apes, progress almost directly from infancy to adulthood.”

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“It seems inconceivable that a species of human could possess fully modern language and not be fully modern in all other ways, too. For this reason, the evolution of language is widely judged to be the culminating event in the emergence of humanity as we know it today.”

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“Spoken language clearly differentiates Homo sapiens from all other creatures. None but humankind produces a complex spoken language, a medium for communication and a medium for introspective reflection.”

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“The world's five thousand extant languages are products of our shared ability, but the five thousand cultures they create are separate from each other.”

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“We are bipedal apes, and it should not be surprising to see that fact reflected in the way our ancestors lived.”

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“Culture represents a novelty in the world of nature, and it could have added an effective, unifying edge to the forces of natural selection.”

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Author:Richard Leakey

“Scientific innovations continually provide us with new means of analyzing the finds.”

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“To investigate the history of man's development, the most important finds are, of course, hominid fossils.”

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“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.”

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Author:Richard Leakey