page_title: Hans Reck
section_title: Later career
hierarchical_section_title: Hans Reck / Later career
caption_attribution_description: Nea Kameni, Santorini
context_page_description: Hans Gottfried Reck was a German volcanologist and paleontologist.
  In 1913 he was the first to discover the ancient skeleton of a human in the Olduvai Gorge, in what is now Tanzania.
  He collaborated with Louis Leakey in a return expedition to the site in 1931.
context_section_description: After the war, the British took over German East Africa, now named Tanganyika.
  Hans Reck was released from internment in Africa and returned to the Museum to resume his work as an assistant there.
  In 1927 the anthropologist Louis Leakey visited Munich to examine the Oldoway Man, and he returned in 1929 for a further study. In his opinion the skeleton was not nearly as old as Reck thought, but was probably about the same age as stone age skeletons from around 20,000 years ago that Leakey had found in Kenya.
  Leakey found the rock and fossil collection from Olduvai was also similar to his Kenya finds. He thought some could be tools, and suggested other tools might be found at Olduvai. Reck disagreed, saying he had searched for tools and found none in 1913.
  Leakey invited Reck to accompany him on a fresh expedition to Olduvai, which Reck gladly accepted.
  The expedition reached Olduvai in September 1931. Leakey soon found a hand-axe made from volcanic rock, not from the flint that Reck had been searching for, winning a large wager the two men had made.
  Within the next four days seventy seven hand axes were discovered.
  Leakey examined the location where Reck had found the skeleton, and quickly came to accept Reck's estimate of its age.
  Leakey, Reck and Arthur Hopwood, another paleontologist, drafted a letter to Nature that stated that the question of the age of Olduvai Man was settled, and was nearly half a million years, and Leakey made a quick return trip to Nairobi to dispatch this and other letters announcing the find.
  Reck had lost all his notes on Olduvai during World War I, but published a book of his first expedition in 1933 called The Ravine of Primeval Man.
  Hans Reck undertook a major study of the Santorini islands in the Aegean in 1936, working with Neuman van Padang and others. The islands form the rim of a caldera. The detailed 1936 work was a major contribution to understanding the evolution of the Santorini volcano and its relation to the geology of the region.
  Reck was planning to prepare a detailed report on the 1913 and 1931 Olduvai findings, but first left on an expedition to Portuguese East Africa.
  Reck had a congenital heart problem, although this had not stopped him in his many expeditions.
  He died of a heart attack in Lourenço Marques in August 1937.
  Hans Reck was not just a vulcanologist and paleontologist, but was an enthusiastic collector of Arab art and a skilled pianist.
  Apart from the skull, most of the skeleton found by Reck at Olduvai was destroyed by bombs during World War II (1939–1945).
  After the war ended his widow attempted unsuccessfully to locate his field notes, contained in many volumes, but they could not be found.
caption: Volcanic craters at Santorini in the Aegean
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