Origin Stories

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 first...

15 Nov 201826min

Origin Stories returns November 15th with more stories about how we became human.

1 Nov 20182min

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 prehisto...

6 Jun 201838min

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 f...

31 Des 201729min

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 th...

7 Nov 201723min

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 prehisto...

28 Sep 201738min

One of the big questions in the study of human evolution is the question of how our ancestors spread across the world. Our species evolved in Africa and migrated around the world from there. Most peop...

21 Sep 201731min

It's not every day you see a Facebook post that changes your life, but that's exactly what happened to Leakey Foundation grantee Alia Gurtov. Gurtov was checking her Facebook feed one morning and saw ...

14 Sep 201739min