The Web: From Apes to Zinj	Volume 54 Number 6, November/December 2001
by Mark Rose

The Leakey Foundation's new website [www.leakeyfoundation.org]

When was Zinjanthropus found? What's the latest research on chimpanzee behavior? If questions like these have been keeping you up at night, The Leakey Foundation's newly revamped website (www.leakeyfoundation.org) will help you catch up on lost sleep. The site offers photos, diaries, lectures (by the likes of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Mary Leakey), and interviews from the foundation's archives, much of the material never before published or otherwise available to the public. An easy-to-use "Timeline of Discovery" lets you scroll, year by year, through important finds in the fields of archaeology, hunter-gatherer studies, paleoanthropology, and primate behavior.

Paleoanthropology buffs will also want to check out the www.becominghuman.org website run by the Institute of Human Origins, though it requires high-speed internet access to take advantage of all of its features.

Both sites have news sections, and given the expertise that the organizations can tap into, you might expect to find more there. At press time, however, neither had posted links or commentary on recent finds of australopithecine fossils at Sterkfontein, South Africa, and a Neandertal jaw at Bau de l'Aubesier in France (see "Nurturing Neandertals"). But these websites are in development, so this criticism may be premature. There's lots on the sites already, and I'm sure I'll be checking back not just for news but for answers to nagging questions about our earliest ancestors and our contemporary cousins.

© 2001 by the Archaeological Institute of America archive.archaeology.org/0111/reviews/zinj.html