Remembering the 60s: PC professor tells of anthropology

More than a decade before “Charlie’s Angels” became a popular sitcom, three real women ventured into the jungle to live most of their adult lives conducting the earliest studies in primatology. Beginning in 1960, Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Birute Galdikas dedicated decades of work that led to a better understanding of the behaviors of humans’ closest relatives in the Primate family — the Great Apes.

That was the focus of Tuesday’s presentation in the Porterville College Theater, given by the Cultural Historical Awareness Program (CHAP). The speaker of the presentation, entitled “Leakey’s Angels,” was Anthropology Professor Richard Osborne.

“What [those three women] did, in sum, was change the study of animal behavior and shed light on our earliest ancestors,” he said.

“The purpose of this is twofold. This is part of our theme this year — of the 1960s —- and also, March is Women’s History Month, so we kind of wanted to double-dip it. The reason [these three women] went out there, initially, is, we are primates, and the idea is that we can learn about our ancestors by studying modern-day apes.”

Osborne’s quick-moving slide show of facts and real-life pictures captivated an audience of teens and adults, college students and an 8-year-old, alike.

“I really liked it,” said Rebecca Keele, 8. “I remember watching a movie of [Diane Fossey] a long time ago: ‘Gorillas in the Mist.’ My favorite thing [about Tuesday’s presentation] was, I really liked the part where one of the monkeys used a stick for termite fishing.” Goodall observed chimpanzees using sticks to dig into holes filled with termites for a snack, which Osborne joked, was “like eating M&M’s” for them.

Keele also learned something new: “Before, I always thought every kind of monkey was a vegetarian.”
Goodall discovered hunting and meat-eating among Chimpanzee populations, as well as their previously undiscovered use of tools.

“It’s Spring Break, and this gives us the chance to take advantage of an educational opportunity they wouldn’t have otherwise,” said Keele’s mother, Elizabeth, who attended the noontime event with her daughter and son, Thane.

In the 1960s, a famous fossil hunter, Louis Leakey, thought up the idea to study primates, but he was too busy, so he hired untrained women to live in the jungle for extended periods of time and record the behaviors of the three different types of primates — chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans.

Based on the idea that, “between six to eight million years ago, modern day apes and humans diverged from a common ancestor,” Osborne said, “...the thinking is, if we study modern-day chimps, and we study their behaviors, then we can kind of infer the behavior of these ancestors.”

Leakey chose untrained women because he believed that formal training would limit creativity, and that women were more detail-oriented observers.

Goodall had no prior college training when she was sent to the Gombe Reserve in East Africa in 1960. She had to climb a mountain every morning for 18 months, with binoculars, before she could be accepted by the chimpanzees as a non-threat. After years of being criticized for ascribing human characteristics to the apes, she eventually earned a doctorate and founded the Jane Goodall Roots and Shoots Institute.

Fossey, who began her mountain gorilla study in 1967, wasn’t accepted by the gorillas for two years. At an elevation of 10,000 feet, and in poor health, she was attacked by animals, broke her leg, and eventually was killed for her intervention in the lifestyles of the poachers of the area she studied. She raised public awareness of the gorillas’ plight and changed the perception of them.

Galdikas, who, next year, will be in her 40th year studying orangutans, is engaging in what is so far the longest continuing animal behavioral study. She sacrificed her marriage at the cost of continuing her work. Her study led to awareness of the social organization orangutans engage in.

Heather Chancellor, 20, who attended the presentation, said, “It was very interesting just how the three ladies had a lot of patience to be there and serve the animals. You have got to have patience to succeed at anything.”
The way that Osborne whizzed through a plethora of information in 40 minutes was especially favorable for Misti Allen, one of his physical anthropology students.

“He made it very understandable and appealing,” she said.

Another one of Osborne’s students, Billy Blount, said, “It taught me a lot of stuff I didn’t know, because he went a lot more into detail than we usually do [in class].”