Travel With Tamara | The Museum of Humankind

When Richard Leakey, world-renowned palaeontologist and conservationist, speaks of the ‘wow factor’ the world sits up and takes notice. And his newest project certainly has ‘wow’.

Leakey is planning a memorial monument to the human story on a dramatic escarpment overlooking the Rift Valley. It’s intended to be the most complete record of humanity in Africa, telling the story of how and why life began when and where it did, and how life came to be what it is today. The series of exhibits will include a state-of-the-art planetarium, full models of various species in the human story over several million years, and models of giant reptiles, otherwise known as dinosaurs. But that’s not all. Using technology being developed called immersive reality, these will appear to come alive and involve visitors in their stories. The Turkana Boy, seen first as an excavation, might stand up, put on flesh, and take visitors through the environment he lived in, showing how he lived in a real sense. A Zinjanthropus might race into the room, then turn and look back in terror as a band of Homo habilis wielding clubs charge him down with screams and yells. As Leakey says, ‘There’s nothing like it in the world.’

‘The story now is so complete yet it’s never been told in a celebratory way,’ says Leakey. ‘I don’t want objects. I don’t want things of curiosity. I don’t want anything static. I want you to be immersed in it, to ask yourself what you can learn from it. I want Silicon Valley and Hollywood, filmmakers and storytellers, to tell the story as it is. It’s fascinating and it’s the story of our existence.’

Leakey and his wife have purchased land over the last 30 years and are going to donate 250 acres on the edge of the Rift Valley to the project. It’s on this stunning sweep of Kenya that Ngaren, the Museum of Humankind, will be built. ‘There’s something very symbolic about telling the story where the story unfolded,’ says Leakey. He and his wife are making this gift of land to a trust which will make it available on a completely free basis to an operating company that will develop the museum. The USA and the Government of Kenya are currently building a super-highway from Mombasa that will pass within a few kilometres of the site, connecting to a new dual highway into Nairobi, making the museum about half an hour’s drive from Wilson Airport. Any proceeds from the museum will go back into its running costs, and into supporting young scientists to do further research through the Turkana Basin Institute.

Internationally renowned architect Daniel Libeskind, who has collaborated on several projects with Leakey, is designing the edifice. With projects including MO Modern Art Museum in Lithuania, the Museum of Zhang Zhidong in China, and the National Holocaust Monument in Canada behind him, Libeskind is no stranger to emotive and inspiring structures. His design for the museum is based on the shape and form of a primitive stone axe – albeit one that’s 80 meters tall – of the type that was used in the early Stone Age between two- and one-million years ago. A leading Kenyan architect, Isaac Mruttu, is working with Libeskind here in Kenya.

‘This could be one of the major landmarks on the African Continent,’ says Leakey. ‘And it should certainly give a sense of pride in being African – which we all are – and pride in Africa. Ngaren will bring alive the extraordinary and fundamental part Africa has played in the world being what it is today.’

Through the museum, Leakey plans to show the link between our evolution and climate change. ‘Had there not been climate change over the last billion years there would be no life today,’ he says. ‘Climate change is the driving force for extinction that creates new opportunities for evolution. The problem is that we’re driving it now, and we’re driving it incredibly fast, and we’re losing species that we can’t afford to lose.’

Indeed Leakey is so concerned by the recent rapid acceleration of climate change that he likens our behaviour to an asteroid that collided with the earth near the Gulf of Mexico causing the last big extinction. The resulting drastic change in climate killed off many species that couldn’t adapt quickly enough to survive.

‘If we can get across the message that we’re all one species, we all have a common ancestry, we certainly all have a common destiny, then the issue of bigotry, colour, racism, just simply pales into insignificance against the real story of what we have to do to survive.’

There are opportunities to contribute towards the funding of Ngaren. If you are interested, please contact Richard Leakey: Richard.leakey@ngaren.org or Ellen C O’Connell: ellen@ngaren.org