Donald Johanson: Looking at my diaries and reading what I’ve written in more popular books, I am reminded of the fact that it was a moment of just absolute exhilaration. This was the most important discovery I had ever made in my life. It was a discovery which has irrevocably changed my whole life’s direction. It immediately elevated me to the status of one of the world’s important and leading anthropologists. I felt a moment of tremendous achievement, tremendous success. I knew that this was an important key to becoming recognized as an important anthropologist. Particularly because that year, my National Science Foundation grant was just running out. When I applied for my first grant to do field research, it was turned down initially by the National Science Foundation, because I didn’t have my doctorate degree, the Ph.D. And I had really very little field experience. People wondered, “Who is this guy who’s making all these claims that IF he is given the money, IF he is given the opportunity to go there, he is going to make major discoveries?” This was a vindication of a tremendous risk that I took in putting all of this in writing. I knew that that was extremely important to my professional career. I also knew it was going to open up doors for me that to that point had been closed, but I didn’t really know that some of those doors I’d wish had remained closed. It also elevated me in the public eye, also. All of a sudden, even though I had spent all of my academic years training to be a scientist, I now had to become an effective communicator to the public about the importance and excitement of these discoveries.