Donald Johanson Quotes

When I realized, in 1978, that Lucy did represent a new species of human ancestor, and that I had an opportunity to name this new species, I realized this was a revolutionary step in understanding human origins.

Lucy brought with her an image of our human ancestors that you don't get when you find a jaw or an arm bone or a leg bone. Here was 40 percent of a single skeleton.

But what really excited me was the idea that humans had a tremendous pre-history that went back millions of years. I wanted to go to Africa to find some of these creatures.

How about Pithecanthropus Erectus? Was it really he who ate the apple? Or was it Homo Pekiniensis?

I got interested in palaeontology and vertebrate history - sparked by books on human evolution - then vertebrate evolution. Studying with palaeontologists kindled my interest in fieldwork.

I kept an open mind on the question of whether a hominid had been present in Europe in the early Pleistocene.

What's changed is we now have good anatomical, geological, archaeological evidence that Neanderthals are not our ancestors. When I wrote 'Lucy,' I considered Neanderthals ancestors of modern humans. We have gone back twice the age of Lucy, six million years. And we see that upright bipedal walking goes back that far in time.

I think that many of my ideas are correct, but I'll bet you, before my death other discoveries will be made that will prompt me to alter various ideas I have about human evolution.

At Olduvai, for 20 years, Mary and I had investigated and made a general survey of the overall geology.

I was being groomed as an undergraduate to specialize in Midwestern prehistory, but going back to my teenage days, my interest has always been in our early human ancestors. I wanted to work in Africa.

Certainly paleontologists have found samples of an extremely small fraction, only, of the earth's extinct species, and even for groups that are most readily preserved and found as fossils they can never expect to find more than a fraction.

With the discovery of Zinjanthropus at Olduvai Gorge in 1959, my grandmother Mary Leakey pioneered the research in East Africa with my grandfather Louis. Many more spectacular fossil finds have since been made, both in Africa and elsewhere, by many researchers driven to understand our past.

What the fossil record does do is to force us to contemplate our place on the planet. We are but one species of several hominids that inhabited Planet Earth, and like our distant cousins who went extinct fairly recently, our time on Planet Earth is also finite.

When the first fossils began to be found in eastern Africa, in the late 1950s, I thought, what a wonderful marriage this was, biology and anthropology. I was around 16 years old when I made this particular choice of academic pursuit.

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.

I went to start the first Ethiopian-led project in paleoanthropology, ever. Doing that was not easy.

Selam is our most complete skeleton of a three-year-old girl who lived and died 3.3 million years ago. She belongs to the species known as Australopithecus afarensis.

Are we the first hominids? I really, really, really doubt it.

When on my return to England I showed the cast of the cranium to Professor Huxley, he remarked at once that it was the most ape-like skull he had ever beheld.

I'm a paleoanthropologist, and my job is to define man's place in nature and explore what makes us human.

I would hazard a guess that we have found fossilized human remains of at least a thousand different specimens in South and East Africa, more or less complete at that. I think this is where the prelude to human history was primarily played out.

The number of known human fossils only increases slowly. But the manner of regarding and assessing them is capable of progressing rapidly, as indeed it does. In the absence of any absolutely sensational discovery in prehistory, there is an up-to-date and scientific manner of understanding man, which is solidly based on palaeontology.

The 'missing link' between ape and man will probably never be found- because it was an embryo.

Three and a half million years ago our ancestors - yours and mine - left these traces [indicates footprints]. We stood up and parted ways from them. Once we were standing on two feet, our eyes were no longer fixated on the ground. Now, we were free to look up and wonder.

We were very, very lucky [with Tim White filmed making historic discoveries in the East African Rift ] . In 100 years, only three skeletal remains [of early man] were ever found at this site. This was the third one, and we were right there when it happened. In fact, when I first heard they had found something, I said, "Please stop it! Don't do anything right now. Let's do it tomorrow until we have unpacked our cameras and assembled our stuff.