Elephants can live to an age of up to 70 or 80 years and they have a good memory. It could be they come across an area that is experiencing a drought. Then they continue on their path and run into people.
From Richard Leakey
Primates need good nutrition, to begin with. Not only fruits and plants, but insects as well.
Whether or not all this came to pass in an East African ditch, I wouldn't like to say. Perhaps it happened in North Africa or further west, but Africa was definitely the place.
We think that groups of between 30 and 40 early men would have settled in an area measuring a hundred square kilometers.
We hope to find more pieces of the puzzle which will shed light on the connection between this upright, walking ape, our early ancestor, and modern man.
We are concerned that, in a few years time, this place of discovery, with its wealth of human fossils, the like of which can be found nowhere else in the world, could be completely destroyed.
To investigate the history of man's development, the most important finds are, of course, hominid fossils.
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.
The land is not in the least bit fertile and yet the cattle herds grow larger and larger. A cow represents capital investment here.
The elephants were being slaughtered in masses. Some were even killed in the vicinity of big tourist hotels.
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