First Look at Jane | National Geographic

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 sending out a photographer to document the chimpanzees.