Louis Leakey sent me to
Gombe because he believed that
an understanding of chimpanzees
in the wild would help
him to better guess
how our Stone-Age
ancestors may have behaved.
It had long been
thought that we were
the only creatures on earth
that used and made tools.
"Man the toolmaker" is
how we were defined.
[music playing]
And here was David
Greybeard using a tool.
It was hard for me to
believe what I'd seen.
A few days later, I watched,
spellbound, as chimps set off
to a termite mound,
picked a small, leafy twig
and stripped it of its leaves.
That was object modification,
the crude beginning
of tool making.
It had never been seen before.
When I telegrammed
the news to Louis,
he responded that we
must now redefine man
or accept chimpanzees as human.
My observations at Gombe
challenged human uniqueness.
And whenever that happens, there
is always a violent uproar.
There were some who would try
to discredit my observations
because I was a young,
untrained girl, who should
therefore be disregarded.
The result of it
all, however, is
that Louis was able
to obtain a grant
from the National Geographic
Society to continue my study.
In addition, they would be
spending out a photographer
to document the chimpanzees.
