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Leakey has learned another object lesson from his probes into the past. Increasingly concerned about overpopulation, environmental abuses and the depletion of natural resources, he fears that man may not be able to cope biologically, that he cannot genetically change fast enough to survive the ever-more-hostile environment he is creating. Says he: "People feel that we are here by predestination and that because we are humans we will be able to survive even if we make mistakes." But, cautions Leakey, these people have no perspective on the fact that humans are living organisms. "There have been thousands of living organisms," he says, "of which a very high percentage has become extinct. There is nothing, at the moment, to suggest that we are not part of that same pattern." He notes that there is one point of difference: man is the only organism with power to reflect on its past and upon its future. That power to reflect, he says, "is what makes us able to plan our future in such a way as to avoid what seems inevitable."
* The bones of Peking man, turned over to U.S. Marines in China shortly before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. soon afterward mysteriously dis appeared. Despite a longstanding offer of a $150,000 reward— finally withdrawn this month — they have never been recovered.