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Louise Leakey: Where Did Human Beings Originate?

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Part 3 of the TED Radio Hour episode How It All Began.

About Louise Leakey's TED Talk

Louise Leakey describes her family's long search for early human remains in Africa, and how unlocking that mystery is the key to understanding our past and our future.

About Louise Leakey

I think that when you work on fossils ... you realize that either you change and adapt or as a species you go extinct.

Louise Leakey is the third generation of scientists to dig for early human remains in East Africa — where her father discovered the "Turkana Boy" fossil and where her grandparents discovered the bones of Homo habilis.

In 1959, her grandfather proved that humans originated in Africa. And since then, Leakey family findings have continued to rewrite humanity's evolutionary timeline. Their finds even suggest that different species of early humans lived side-by-side.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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NPR/TED Staff
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