Origin Stories

Atapuerca is a place that holds the mystery of human evolution in Europe from 1.2 million years ago through recent times. You can find, in one place, the oldest human in Europe, the first murder in t…

What is it like to be responsible for the safekeeping of the ancestors of everyone in the world? In this episode, we travel to the National Museum of Ethiopia to see our most famous fossil relative –…

Have you ever considered how profoundly food has shaped who we are as a species? Julie Lesnik is a paleoanthropologist who studies the evolution of the human diet. Her special focus is on insects as …

Deep in the forests of Borneo, lives a society of hunter-gatherers who speak a language never before shared with outsiders. Until now.

The Cave Punan are the last surviving hunter-gatherers in Indone…

What happens when bows and arrows and face-to-face conversations are replaced by high powered weapons and cell phones practically overnight? Dr. Polly Wiessner is an anthropologist who has studied th…

A mysterious new human relative was discovered ten years ago from a pinky bone found in a Siberian cave. They're called the Denisovans, and people around the world carry their DNA today. Until just a…

In this episode, we explore the story of Piltdown Man – one of the most notorious hoaxes in history. 

When Piltdown Man was discovered in a gravel pit outside a small English village in 1912, it was …

In the final installment of our "From the Archive" series, Kenyan paleoanthropologist Louis S.B. Leakey shares the story of his life and work in a never-before-released interview recorded in 1969.

Th…

Mary Leakey was called the "grand dame" of archaeology. She was a methodical and exacting scientist who made some of the world's most significant archaeological discoveries. In this lecture from The …

Tepilit Ole Saitoti was a Maasai warrior, author, and natural resources expert. In this lecture from The Leakey Foundation archive, Saitoti tells his life story, discusses Maasai culture, and explore…

Raymond Dart was getting dressed for a wedding when he was given two boxes of rocks and fossils. Inside the boxes, he found the first evidence of humanity’s African origins. This episode tells the st…

In this never-before-released archival lecture from 1974, anthropologist Margaret Mead discusses the lives of women from prehistoric through modern times.

Show Notes

The Leakey Foundation is 50 years…

In this never-before-released archival lecture from 1973, the legendary primatologist Dian Fossey tells the story of the early years of her groundbreaking mountain gorilla research.

Show Notes

The L…

Carl Sagan explores the evolution of human intelligence from the big bang, fifteen billion years ago, through today in this never-before-released archival lecture.

Show Notes The Leakey Foundation is…

A scientist solves the mystery of the only known chimpanzee civil war...thus far.

In 1960, Louis Leakey sent Jane Goodall to start her study of chimpanzees at Gombe National Park, Tanzania. Her firs…

The stories and songs of prehistoric people are lost. Their art and artifacts are all that remain of their culture.

The painted caves of Ice Age Europe are the world's most famous examples of prehist…

Three true tales about what it's like to do field research.

Kelly Stewart, Dorothy Cheney, and Robert Seyfarth share stories of gun smuggling, pet leeches, close encounters with hippos, and fan mail …

For a long time, scientists have been searching for the first Homo sapiens in the Great Rift Valley of Ethiopia. The story we've been telling about the origin of our species has gone something like t…

The stories and songs of prehistoric people are lost. Their art and artifacts are all that remain of their culture.

The painted caves of Ice Age Europe are the world's most famous examples of prehist…