Glynn Llywelyn Isaac (19 November 1937 – 5 October 1985) was a South African

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...

who specialised in the very early

prehistory Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The us ...

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

, and was one of twin sons born to botanists William Edwyn Isaac and

Frances Margaret Leighton Frances Margaret Leighton (8 March 1909 – 8 January 2006) was a South African botanist and educator. After graduating from Rhodes University with her M.Sc degree in 1931, she worked at the Bolus Herbarium until 1947. Her primary research intere ...

. He has been called the most influential Africanist of the last half century, and his papers on human movement and behavior are still cited in studies a quarter of a century later.Jeanne Sept and David Pilbeam, Eds, "Casting the Net Wide," Oxbow Books, 2011.

Biography

He took his first degree from the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university statu ...

in 1958 before studying for his

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * '' Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. al ...

Peterhouse, Cambridge Peterhouse is the oldest constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England, founded in 1284 by Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely. Today, Peterhouse has 254 undergraduates, 116 full-time graduate students and 54 fellows. It is quite ...

which he completed in 1969. He was also Warden for Prehistoric Sites in

Kenya ) , national_anthem = " Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi , ...

between 1961 and 1962 and deputy director of the Centre for Prehistory and

Palaeontology Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

at the National Museums of Kenya from 1963 to 1965. Working with

Richard Leakey Richard Erskine Frere Leakey (19 December 1944 – 2 January 2022) was a Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist and politician. Leakey held a number of official positions in Kenya, mostly in institutions of archaeology and wildlife conse ...

, he was co-director of the East African

Koobi Fora Koobi Fora refers primarily to a region around Koobi Fora Ridge, located on the eastern shore of Lake Turkana in the territory of the nomadic Gabbra people. According to the National Museums of Kenya, the name comes from the Gabbra language: ...

project. In 1966 he joined the

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...

department at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

and in 1983 he was appointed Professor of Anthropology at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

where he was developing new research projects at the time of his death. He was survived by his twin brother, Rhys Isaac, an historian, based at

La Trobe University La Trobe University is a public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Its main campus is located in the suburb of Bundoora. The university was established in 1964, becoming the third university in the state of Victoria a ...

. He died in 1985 in

Yokosuka is a city in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. , the city has a population of 409,478, and a population density of . The total area is . Yokosuka is the 11th most populous city in the Greater Tokyo Area, and the 12th in the Kantō region. The city ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

due to illness, at the age of 47.Dean R. Gerstein and R. Duncan Luce (1988)
The Behavioral and Social Sciences
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Contributions

Glynn Isaac is best remembered for a series of papers and ideas which attempted to combine the available archeological record with models of both human behavior and a human activity from the standpoint of

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

. In the early 1970s Isaac published on the effect of social networks, gathering, meat eating and other factors on human evolution, and proposed a series of models to examine how groups of humans in the paleolithic would have engaged in acquiring the necessities of life, and interacting with each other. Isaac's models focused on a "home base" and the importance of sexual division of labor on hominid social organization.

Works

*''The Archaeology of Human Origins'', Cambridge University Press. *''Olorgesailie: Archaeological Studies of the Middle Lake Basin in Kenya'', University of Chicago Press, 1977. *The food-sharing behavior of protohuman hominids. ''Scientific American'' 238:90-108, 1978. *''Koobi Fora Research Project: Plio-Pleistocene Archaeology'', Glynn Ll. Isaac (Editor), ''et al.'', Clarendon Press, 1997. *''Human Origins: Louis Leakey and the East African Evidence'', Glynn Ll. Isaac, Elizabeth Richards McCown, WA Benjamin, 1976.

References

*Darvill, T (ed.) (2003). ''Oxford Concise Dictionary of Archaeology'', Oxford: Oxford University Press. . *Jeanne Sept and David Pilbeam, Eds., "Casting the Net Wide," Oxbow Books, 2011. .

Notes

External links