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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello Hello, everyone, Welcome to This Day in

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Speaker 1: History Class, where we bring you a new tidbit from

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Speaker 1: history every day. Today is July nineteen. The day was

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Speaker 1: July sev nineteen fifty nine, English archaeologist Mary Leaky discovered

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Speaker 1: the school of an ancient hominin now known as Parenthesis

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Speaker 1: boy c I. Paleo Anthropologists found the first P. Boy

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Speaker 1: c I fossils in East Africa in nteen fifty five,

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Speaker 1: but it was not taxonomically classified until later after Leaky's find, P.

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Speaker 1: Boy c I was identified as a new species. Mary

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Speaker 1: and her husband Lewis, who was also an archaeologist, had

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Speaker 1: already made some important archaeological discoveries before they came across P.

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Speaker 1: Boy c I. They found a complete skull of an

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Speaker 1: early Mioscene Epe in nineteen forty eight, and Mary recorded

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Speaker 1: Tanzanian rock paintings in nineteen fifty one, but the P.

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Speaker 1: Boy c I fossils were Mary's most famous discovery. From

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one to nineteen fifty eight, the Leakies excavated

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Speaker 1: bed two of the Old Divide Gorge, an important paleo

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Speaker 1: anthropological site near the border of Kenya and Tanzania. There

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Speaker 1: are seven major stratigraphic units, or layers of deposition in

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Speaker 1: the gorge. Bed two is stated at about one point

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Speaker 1: one five million to one point seven million years old,

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Speaker 1: but in nineteen fifty nine the Leakies turned their attention

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Speaker 1: to BID one, which is about one point seven million

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Speaker 1: to two point one million years old. On July seventeenth,

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine, Louis remained at camp because he was sick,

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Speaker 1: but when Mary was out working, she found the remains

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Speaker 1: of a skull at a site named f. L. K Zinge,

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Speaker 1: about twenty two ft below the upper limit of BED one.

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Speaker 1: The Leakies ended up uncovering about four hundred fragments that

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Speaker 1: made up a nearly complete skull. The specimen was label

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Speaker 1: O H five or old V Hominid five. It had

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Speaker 1: large teeth, leading people to dubbed the specimen nutcracker Man.

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Speaker 1: Raymond Dart and Robert Broom had found similar specimens in

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Speaker 1: South Africa, but in August the Leaks published the discovery

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Speaker 1: and Nature and called it Zenians boy c I. Though

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Speaker 1: they considered including it in the genus Australopiscus, they decided

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Speaker 1: to define a new genus for the specimen. The word

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Speaker 1: Zin is an old Arabic word that referred to East Africa,

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Speaker 1: and the word boy c I came from the name

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Speaker 1: Charles Boise, who had been financing the Leaky's expeditions. They

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Speaker 1: also found stone tools in bed one, though those tools

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Speaker 1: were later linked to Homo habilists. Zientis boy c I

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Speaker 1: later reclassified Australopithecus boy c I and then Parenthropist boy

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Speaker 1: c I was dated to one point seven five million

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Speaker 1: years ago. That made it the oldest hominin discovered at

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Speaker 1: the time. The previous finds have been difficult to date

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Speaker 1: due to the limits of contemporary technology. The find marked

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Speaker 1: a change in the way scientists traced human evolution. At

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Speaker 1: the time. The commonly held view was that human lineage

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Speaker 1: had its roots in Asia, but the discovery of P.

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Speaker 1: Boy c I suggested that hominins evolved in Africa. The

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Speaker 1: discovery of P. Boy C I got the Leakies funding

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Speaker 1: from National Geographic which allowed them to work on more projects.

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Speaker 1: Mary and her son Jonathan found a hominin in nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty one that Louis Leaky, Philip Tobias, and John Napier

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Speaker 1: called Homo habilists in their nineteen sixty four paper in

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Speaker 1: the journal Nature. They called it Homo habilists because they

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Speaker 1: believed it used tools. Louis Leaky thought that it was

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Speaker 1: the first member of the genus Homo and that it

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Speaker 1: coexisted with P. Boy c I. Later discoveries confirmed that

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Speaker 1: more than one species of early humans lived in the

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Speaker 1: same geographical area at the same time, and in the

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Speaker 1: late nineteen seventies, Mary and her team discovered dominent footprints

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Speaker 1: and volcanic ash at the Liatoli beds near Old Duvai Gorge.

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Speaker 1: There were three million to three point five million years

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Speaker 1: old left by an upright bipedal hominin, possibly Austra Lopithecus

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Speaker 1: and Forensis. As there was controversy in the scientific community

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Speaker 1: over just how bipedal early hominins were, this was a

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Speaker 1: significant discovery. During the same time period, Mary's team found

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Speaker 1: the remains of early hominids in fifteen new animal species.

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Speaker 1: More P. Boy c I fossils were found in the

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Speaker 1: years after Leakey's discovery. Debate over the lineage and taxonomy

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Speaker 1: of P. Boy c I continues today. I'm Eves Jeff

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Speaker 1: Coote and hopefully you know a little more about history

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Speaker 1: today than you did yesterday. If you feel like correcting

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Speaker 1: my pronunciation or my accent on anything that I've said

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Speaker 1: comment on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. At t d I

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Speaker 1: a h C podcast, We'll see you here in the

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