Olduvai Gorge’s 1931 Leakey investigations

Record summary

Louis Leakey’s 1931 expedition to Olduvai Gorge recorded fossiliferous deposits, stone tools, and geological exposures that later became foundational to African prehistory. Although the most famous hominin discoveries came in later decades, the 1931 work is an identifiable early research episode that helped establish the gorge as a major archive of human evolution. Its importance lies in site recognition, collection, and geological description rather than in a single unresolved artefact. Early finds and interpretations require separation from discoveries made by Mary and Louis Leakey after 1950.