In the first chapter of my earlier book (Leakey, 1951) on Olduvai Gorge and on the evolution of the Hand-axe culture there, I outlined the sequence of events which led to my first expedition to Olduvai in 1931. I also summarised the work carried out from 1931 to 1947. There is no need to refer here to any of that earlier part of the story, since it can easily be found in the first book and I shall discuss the sequence of the events from 1947 onwards.

In 1947 the first Pan-African Congress of Prehistory met in Nairobi and at its conclusion I arranged an excursion to sites in Tanganyika, including Olduvai Gorge. One of the first places to which I took the visiting scientists on that occasion was FLK I, for it was there, during the 1931-2 season, that we had first proved the existence of a primitive Stone Age culture in situ in Bed I. This is the culture which I later described under the name of Oldowan and which has sometimes been erroneously referred to as the ‘Pebble culture’. Other parts of the Gorge were, of course, also visited, but both on that occasion and on many others, from 1947 to 1958, I took visiting scientists to see the site FLK I. Thus the place which eventually gave us such a wealth of new information about earliest man and the evolution of the Oldowan culture is one which many leading Prehistorians and Pleistocene geologists had seen, before these discoveries were made.