Editing Louis Leakey (section)

==Reversals of fortune==
=== Defence of Reck ===
In November 1931, Louis led an expedition to Olduvai whose members included Reck,<ref>Arthur Tindell Hopwood, Donald MacInnes, [[Vivian Fuchs]], Captain Hewlitt, Frances Kenrick, Frida, Reck, and a number of African assistants.</ref> whom Louis allowed to enter the gorge first. Leakey had bet Reck that Leakey would find Acheulean tools within the first 24 hours, which he did.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Morton |first1=Glenn R. |title=Adam, Apes and Anthropology |date=1997 |publisher=Lulu.com (self-published) |location=Spring, Texas |isbn=0-9648227-2-5 |page=11 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=80hHDwAAQBAJ}}{{self-published source|date=May 2020}}</ref> These verified the provenance of the 1913 find, now called Olduvai Man. Non-humanoid fossils and tools were extracted from the ground in large numbers. Frida delayed joining her husband and was less enthusiastic about him on behalf of Priscilla. She did arrive eventually, however, and Louis put her to work. Frida's site became FLK, for Frida Leakey's Karongo ("gully").<ref name=frida>{{Cite ODNB|title=Leakey, Henrietta Wilfrida (1902–1993)|url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-52219|access-date=2020-09-23|year=2004|language=en|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/52219}}</ref>

Back in Cambridge, the sceptics were not impressed. To find supporting evidence of the antiquity of Reck's Olduvai Man, Louis returned to Africa, excavating at [[Kanam (Kenya)|Kanam]] and [[Kanjera]]. He easily found more fossils, which he named [[Homo kanamensis]]. While he was gone, the opposition worked up some "evidence" of the intrusion of Olduvai Man into an earlier layer, evidence that seemed convincing at the time, but is missing and unverifiable now. On his return, Louis' finds were carefully examined by a committee of 26 scientists and were tentatively accepted as valid.{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}<ref>Read about these events in ''[https://www.jstor.org/stable/25470615?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents Recent Research into Oldowan Hominin Activities at Kanjera South, Western Kenya]'', by L. C. Bishop et al., published in the ''African Archaeological Review''.</ref>

===Scandal===
Following their marriage in 1928, Louis and Frida lived in [[Foxton, Cambridgeshire|Foxton]] near Cambridge. In November 1932, Frida used an inheritance to purchase a large brick house in [[Girton, Cambridgeshire|Girton]], which the family named "The Close".

The following year, Frida was pregnant, suffered from<!-- !  check for tone !--> [[morning sickness]] most of the time, and was unable to work on the illustrations for Louis's second book, ''Adam's Ancestors.'' At a dinner party given in his honor, after a lecture of his at the [[Royal Anthropological Institute]], [[Gertrude Caton-Thompson]] introduced her own illustrator, the twenty-year-old [[Mary Leakey|Mary Nicol]]. Louis convinced Mary to take on the illustration of his book, and a few months later companionship turned into an affair.<ref name=morell/> Frida gave birth to [[Colin Leakey|Colin]] in December 1933, and the next month Louis left her and his newborn son.<ref name=frida/> She would not sue for divorce until 1936.<ref name=morell>This account is based on Morell, Chapter 4, "Louis and Mary".</ref>

A panel at Cambridge investigated his morals. Grants dried up, but his mother raised enough money for another expedition to Olduvai, Kanam, and Kanjera, the latter two on the [[Winam Gulf]].<ref>The guest list is Peter Bell (zoologist), Sam White (surveyor), Peter Kent (geologist), Heselon Mukiri, Thairu Irumbi, Ndekei.</ref> His previous work there was questioned by [[Percy George Hamnall Boswell|P. G. H. Boswell]],<ref>Head of the Department of Geology at the [[Imperial College of Science]], London.</ref> whom he invited to verify the sites for himself. Arriving at Kanam and Kanjera in 1935, they found that the iron markers Louis had used to mark the sites had been removed by the [[Luo (family of ethnic groups)|Luo]] tribe for use as harpoons and the sites could not now be located. To make matters worse, all the photos Louis took were ruined by a light leak in the camera. After an irritating and fruitless two-month search, Boswell left for England, promising, as Louis understood it, not to publish a word until Louis returned.

Boswell immediately set out to publish as many words as he was able, beginning with a letter in ''Nature'' dated 9 March 1935, destroying Reck's and Louis's dates of the fossils and questioning Louis's competence. Despite the searches for the iron markers, Boswell averred that "the earlier expedition (of 1931–32) neither marked the localities on the ground nor recorded the sites on a map."<ref>{{cite journal | last = Boswell | first =P. G. H. | title = Human Remains from Kanam and Kanjera, Kenya Colony | journal = Nature | volume = 135 | issue = 3410 | pages = 371 | date = 1935-03-09 | language = en | doi = 10.1038/135371a0 | bibcode = 1935Natur.135..371B | s2cid = 4079483 | doi-access = free }}</ref> In a field report of March 1935, Louis accused Boswell of reneging on his word, but Boswell asserted he had made no such promise, and now having public opinion on his side, warned Louis to withdraw the claim. Louis was not only forced to retract the accusation in his final field report in June 1935 but also to recant his support of Reck. Louis was through at Cambridge. Even his mentors turned on him.<ref>This account is based on Morell, Chapter 5, "Disaster at Kanam", supplemented with detail from Louis' account in ''By the Evidence'', Chapter 2. Olduvai Man languished through World War II in a Berlin museum and then partially disappeared, but preservative applied to the bones took away any hope of an accurate C-14 date; however, neither can any evidence of intrusion be located. Kanjera Man is ancient, possibly [[Homo habilis]]; Homo kanamensis is an intrusion.</ref>

===On the road in Africa===
Meeting Mary in Africa, he proceeded to Olduvai with a small party. Louis' parents continued to urge him to return to Frida, and would pay for everyone in the party but Mary. Mary joined him under a stigma but her skill and competence eventually won over the other participants. Louis and his associates did the groundwork for future excavation at Olduvai, uncovering dozens of sites for a broad sampling, as was his method. They were named after the excavator: SHK (Sam Howard's karongo), BK (Peter Bell's), SWK (Sam White's), MNK (Mary Nicol's). Louis and Mary conducted a temporary clinic for the [[Maasai people|Maasai]], made preliminary investigations of [[Laetoli]], and ended by studying the rock paintings at the [[Kisese]]/[[Cheke, Tanzania|Cheke]] region.<ref>The initial chapters of ''By the Evidence'' and Morell, Chapter 6, "Olduvai's Bounty", describe the explorations on which these few sentences are based.</ref>

===Return to England===
[[File:Steen Cottage, Nasty.jpg|thumb|Steen Cottage, Nasty, Great Munden in 2011]]
Louis and Mary returned to England in 1935 without positions or any place to stay except Mary's mother's apartment. They soon leased Steen Cottage in [[Great Munden]]. This settlement was in [[Hertfordshire]] and had an unusual name which Louis, with his sense of humor noted in his ''Memoirs'', Chapter 5, as "the village of [[Nasty, Hertfordshire|Nasty]]." They lived without heat, electricity, or plumbing, fetching water from a well and writing by oil lantern. They lived in poverty for 18 months at this low point of their fortunes, visited at first only by Mary's relatives. Louis gardened for subsistence and exercise and improved the house and grounds. He appealed at last to the [[Royal Society]], who relented with a small grant to continue work on his collection.