Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

All things bleak and bare beneath a brazen sky: practice and place in the analysis of Australopithecus

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The fossilized primate skull known as the Taungs Baby, discovered in South Africa, was put forward in 1925 as a controversial ‘missing link’ between humans and apes. This essay examines the controversy generated by the fossil, with a focus on practice and the circulation of material objects. Viewing the Taungs story from this perspective provides a new outlook on debates, one that suggests that attention to the importance of place, particularly the ways that specific localities shape scientific practices, is crucial to understanding such controversies. During the 1920s, the fossil itself did not move or circulate from its South African location, a fact that raised methodological concerns in understanding its significance and drew immense criticism from a range of experts. Examining the criticisms regarding the fossil’s failure to circulate draws attention to the importance of centers of accumulation in the analysis of hominid fossils. Diverging from existing histories that primarily emphasize the role of theory in paleoanthropological debates, then, this article argues that scientific practice played an important role in the Taungs fossil controversy. Examining this dimension of the debates has broader implications for revealing the underlying imperial assumptions that guided hominid paleontology during the early twentieth century.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. More recently, the fossil has become known as the Taung Child, but I am keeping the nickname that was used at the time.

  2. There is a growing body of literature on this topic, including: Daston (2000), Alberti (2005) and Sommer (2007).

  3. The Taungs Baby was the first major fossil contender for a “missing link” that failed to circulate in such a way, I argue. Other fossils, like the Java Man, travelled from their remote locations to be analyzed, as discussed in Tattersall (1995).

  4. Indeed, Dart’s advisor, Sir Grafton Elliot Smith, later tried to help with library resources by donating his own library to Dart: Letter Dart to Elliot Smith, 15 April 1936, Raymond Dart Papers, University of Witwatersrand (hereafter RDP).

  5. Dart did “tentatively” propose a new family be created for this group of individuals, Homo-simiadae, which essentially denoted his perception of it as a missing link, but he did refrain from using the colloquial term, see Dart (1925).

  6. Interpretations varied dramatically, especially across national borders. For example, the Piltdown fossils failed to hold as much confidence in France or the United States as in England, as seen in Hrdlička (1923). In fact, Richard Delisle has argued that the modern assumption of the big impact of Piltdown is not historically accurate, and that historians should perhaps rethink Piltdown’s impact, see Delisle (2007).

  7. Which, of course, was by design, as the fossil was a fraud, discussed in Spencer (1990).

  8. Also discussed in Kern, E. Out of Asia: A global history of the scientific search for the origins of humankind, 1800–1965. Unpublished dissertation.

  9. Interestingly, this was not the first time Broom and Dart had suggested a primitive species of human had been found in South Africa, there was a discussion around Homo capensis a few years earlier that may have made Keith, Elliot Smith, and others additionally skeptical, though no one explicitly mentioned this in their publications. See Broom (1918) and Dart (1923).

  10. Elliot Smith, G. Man’s Early Ancestors-Epoch in human history unveiled by Peking discovery. Telegraph 17 December 29. In Perry Papers, MS ADD 279 B4-C, University College London.

  11. For example, the Neanderthal Gibraltar skull, which traveled to London, as well as the Old Man from La Chapelle-aux-Saints, which made its way to Paris.

  12. Even the first Sinanthropus tooth went on tour around the United States and Europe, brought by Davidson Black, though this practice ceased with later Sinanthropus discoveries, see Reader (2011).

  13. Letter from Robert Broom to Raymond Dart, 3 June 1925, RDP.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Letter from Raymond Dart to Phillip Tobias, 26 December 1972, RDP.

  17. Letter from Grafton Elliot Smith to Raymond Dart, 28 November 1928, RDP.

  18. Letter from Grafton Elliot Smith to Arthur Woodword, 28 December 1930, Elliot Smith Papers, MS 56303, British Library.

  19. Letter from Robert Broom to Raymond Dart, 3 June 1925, RDP.

  20. Letter from Arthur Keith to Raymond Dart, 13 May 1925.

  21. Letter from Raymond Dart to Arthur Keith, 3 June 1925, Royal College of Surgeons Library, MS0018/1/4/2.

  22. Though, interestingly he seems to have mentioned it to Davidson Black, who responded in a letter “I hope you will be successful in arranging to have casts made. This certainly would be a very laborious undertaking if you had to do it yourself.” Davidson Black to Raymond Dart, 3 March 1925, RDP.

  23. Diagram sketch housed in RDP.

  24. Arthur Keith to Raymond Dart, 30 June 1925. RDP.

  25. Though in the 1930 s casts were made and circulated internationally, see Pyne (2016).

  26. This was the impression of Dart and Broom, at least, as discussed in Dart’s unpublished manuscript “Australopithecus africanus: And his place in human origins,” 1929, p 7, RDP; Broom (1929a).

  27. Letter from Grafton Elliot Smith to Raymond Dart, 25 February 1925, RDP.

  28. Letter from Elliot Smith to Raymond Dart, 8 April 1930, RDP.

  29. Unpublished manuscript “Australopithecus africanus: And his place in human origins,” Raymond Dart 1929, 2, RDP.

  30. Unpublished manuscript “Australopithecus africanus,” Dart 1929, 4.

  31. Ibid.

  32. Letter from the Royal Society to Grafton Elliot Smith, 4 July 1930, RDP.

  33. Letter Elliot Smith to Raymond Dart, 25 February 1931, RDP.

  34. Davidson Black was also in London presenting the Sinanthropus fossils and these quite overshadowed Dart’s find, discussed in Gundling (2005).

  35. Raymond Dart to William King Gregory, 17 June 193, William King Gregory Papers, American Museum of Natural History.

  36. Letter from Grafton Elliot Smith to Raymond Dart, 25 February 1931, RDP.

  37. Letter from Phillip Tobias to Raymond Dart, 1 December 1972, RDP.

  38. Letter from Raymond Dart to Phillip Tobias, 26 December 1972.

  39. Ibid.

  40. Ibid.

  41. Letter Dart to Le Gros Clark, 10 March 1948, RDP.

  42. Examples of other factors include: a discussion of Dart’s personality and perceived authority in Reader (2011). A discussion of the possible distraction of Piltdown in Falk (2011), Lewin (1997). A mention of the issue of the geologic age of the Taung fossil in Delisle (2007). The impact of racial ideas has only begun to be explored, for example in Kuljian (2016).

  43. The Peking Man fossils (Sinanthropus), for example, are a good case to explore in future research, as the initial findings from 1927 were circulated, but the later findings from 1929 on remained in Peking, where a scientific center was constructed, see Reader (2011).

References

  • Alberti, S. J. (2005). Objects and the museum. Isis, 96(4), 559–571.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bowler, P. J. (1986). Theories of human evolution: A century of debate, 1844–1944. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Broom, R. (1918). The evidence afforded by the Boskop skull of a new species of primitive man (Homo capensis). American Museum of Natural History, 32(2), 63–79.

    Google Scholar 

  • Broom, R. (1929a). Note on the milk dentition of Australopithecus. Journal of Zoology, 99(1), 85–88.

    Google Scholar 

  • Broom, R. (1929b). What the world owes to South Africa. Scientific American, 141, 119–121.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Broom, R. (1950). Finding the missing link. London: Watts.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dart, R. A. (1923). Boskop remains from the south-east African coast. Nature, 112, 623–625.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dart, R. A. (1925). Australopithecus africanus: The man-ape of South Africa. Nature, 115, 195–199.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dart, R. A. (1934). The dentition of Australopithecus africanus. Folia Anatomica Japonica, 12(4), 207–221.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dart, R. A. (1959). Adventures with the missing link. New York: Harper.

    Google Scholar 

  • Darwin, C. (1871). The descent of man. London: John Murray.

    Google Scholar 

  • Daston, L. (Ed.). (2000). Biographies of scientific objects. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Delisle, R. G. (2007). Debating humankind’s place in nature, 1860–2000: The nature of paleoanthropology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dennell, R. W. (2001). From Sangiran to Olduvai, 1937–1960: The quest for ‘centres’ of hominid origins in Asia and Africa. In R. Corbey & W. Roeboek (Eds.), Studying human origins: Disciplinary history and epistemology (pp. 45–66). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Drell, J. R. (2000). Neanderthals: A history of interpretation. Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 19(1), 1–24.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dubow, S. (1996). Human origins, race typology and the other Raymond Dart. African Studies, 55(1), 1–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dubow, S. (2006). A commonwealth of knowledge: Science, sensibility, and white South Africa 1820–2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Duckworth, W. L. H. (1925). The fossil anthropoid ape from Taungs. Nature, 115, 236.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elliot Smith, G. (1924). The evolution of man: Essays. London: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elliot Smith, G. (1925a). The fossil anthropoid ape from Taungs. Nature, 115, 235.

    Google Scholar 

  • Elliot Smith, G. (1925b). Taungs fossil skull: More manlike than any known ape. The Times. In Grafton Elliot Smith Papers, University College London Archives.

  • Endersby, J. (2008). Imperial nature: Joseph Hooker and the practices of Victorian science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Falk, D. (2011). The fossil chronicles: How two controversial discoveries changed our view of human evolution. Oakland: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fan, F. T. (2007). Science in cultural borderlands: methodological reflections on the study of science, European imperialism, and cultural encounter. East Asian Science, Technology and Society, 1(2), 213–231.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fan, F. T. (2013). Circulating material objects: The international controversy over antiquities and fossils in twentieth-century China. In B. Lightman & L. Stewart (Eds.), The circulation of knowledge between Britain, India and China: The early-modern world to the twentieth century (pp. 209–236). Leiden: Brill.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goodrum, M. (2008). Dart, Raymond Arthur. Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 20, 237–242.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gundling, T. (2005). First in line: Tracing our ape ancestry. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamilton, C., Mbenga, B., & Ross, R. (Eds.). (2010). The Cambridge history of South Africa (Vol. 1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hrdlička, A. (1923). Variation in the dimension of lower molars in man and anthropoid apes. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 6, 195–216.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hrdlička, A. (1925). The Taungs ape. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 8(4), 379–392.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hrdlička, A. (1930). The skeletal remains of early man. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keith, A. (1925a). The fossil anthropoid ape from Taungs. Nature, 115, 234.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keith, A. (1925b). The Taungs skull. Nature, 116(July), 11.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keith, A. (1925c). The Taungs skull. Nature, 116(September), 462–463.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Keith, A. (1947). Australopithecinæ or Dartians. Nature, 159, 377.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Knight, D., & Sabey, A. (1984). The lion roars at Wembley. London: Barnard & Westwood.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuljian, C. (2016). Darwin’s hunch: Science, race and the search for human origins. Johannesburg: Jacana Media.

    Google Scholar 

  • Latour, B. (1987). Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewin, R. (1997). Bones of contention: Controversies in the search for human origins. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lightman, B., McOuat, G., & Stewart, L. (2013). The circulation of knowledge between Britain, India and China: The early-modern world to the twentieth century. Leiden: Brill.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Madison, P. (2016). The most brutal of human skulls: Measuring and knowing the first Neanderthal. The British Journal for the History of Science, 49(3), 411–432.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Manias, C. (2015). Building Baluchitherium and Indricotherium: Imperial and international networks in early-twentieth century paleontology. Journal of the History of Biology, 48(2), 237–278.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Manias, C. (2017a). Jesuit scientists and Mongolian fossils: The French paleontological missions in China, 1923–1928. Isis, 108(3), 307–332.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Manias, C. (2017b). Robert Broom’s prehistoric sketches: Conveying objects through illustration in the early-twentieth century. Museum History Journal, 10(2), 162–182.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Manias, C. (2018). Reconstructing an incomparable organism: The Chalicothere in nineteenth and early-twentieth century palaeontology. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 40(1), 1–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nair, S. P. (2005). Eyes and no eyes: Siwalik fossil collecting and the crafting of Indian palaeontology (1830–1847). Science in Context, 18(3), 359–392.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pietsch, T. (2013). Empire of scholars: Universities, networks and the British academic world, 1850–1939. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Podgorny, I. (2013). Fossil dealers, the practices of comparative anatomy and British diplomacy in Latin America, 1820–1840. The British Journal for the History of Science, 46(4), 647–674.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pyne, L. V. (2016). Seven skeletons: The evolution of the world’s most famous human fossils. New York: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Raj, K. (2007). Relocating modern science: Circulation and the construction of knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650–1900. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Reader, J. (2011). Missing links: The hunt for earliest man. London: Collins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Richmond, J. (2009a). Design and dissent: Religion, authority, and the scientific spirit of Robert Broom. Isis, 100(3), 485–504.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Richmond, J. (2009b). Experts and Australopithecines: Credibility and controversy in the science of human evolution, 1924–1959 (dissertation). https://escholarship.org/content/qt3zd1k4tk/qt3zd1k4tk.pdf. Accessed 15 May 2017.

  • Rieppel, L. (2015). Plaster cast publishing in nineteenth-century paleontology. History of Science, 53(4), 456–491.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Roberts, L. (2009). Situating science in global history: Local exchanges and networks of circulation. Itinerario, 33(1), 9–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rudwick, M. (2000). Georges Cuvier’s paper museum of fossil bones. Archives of Natural History, 27(1), 51–68.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rudwick, M. (2005). Bursting the limits of time: The reconstruction of geohistory in the age of revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Schiebinger, L. (2005). Forum introduction: The European colonial science complex. Isis, 96(1), 52–55.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Secord, J. A. (2004). Knowledge in transit. Isis, 95(4), 654–672.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shapin, S. (1998). Placing the view from nowhere: Historical and sociological problems in the location of science. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 23(1), 5–12.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shipman, P. (2002). The man who found the missing link: Eugene Dubois and his lifelong quest to prove Darwin right. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sommer, M. (2007). Bones and ochre: The curious afterlife of the Red Lady of Paviland. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • South Africa believed the cradle of mankind, by Oscar Lazar. (1925). The Star. Raymond Dart Papers, University of Witwatersrand.

  • Spencer, F. (1984). The Neanderthals and their evolutionary significance: A brief historical survey. In Fred H. Smith & Frank Spencer (Eds.), Origins of modern humans: A World survey of the fossil evidence (pp. 1–49). New York: Alan Liss.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spencer, F. (1990). Piltdown: A scientific forgery. London: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Štrkalj, G., & Tobias, P. V. (2008). Raymond Dart as a pioneering primatologist. HOMO Journal of Comparative Human Biology, 59(4), 271–286.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tattersall, I. (1995). The fossil trail: How we know what we think we know about human evolution. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taungs man-ape: World keenly interested in news from Johannesburg. (1925, 5 February). The Star. In Raymond Dart Papers, University of Witwatersrand.

  • The Taungs skull. (1925, 7 February). The Star. In Raymond Dart Papers, University of Witwatersrand.

  • Theunissen, L. T. (1988). Eugène Dubois and the ape-man from Java: The history of the first ‘missing link’ and its discoverer. Berlin: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tobias, P. V. (2006). The discovery of the Taung skull of Australopithecus africanus and the neglected role of Professor RB Young. Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 61(2), 131–138.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vetter, J. (2008). Cowboys, scientists, and fossils: The field site and local collaboration in the American West. Isis, 99(2), 273–303.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vetter, J. (2016). Field life: Science in the American West during the railroad era. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Woodward, A. S. (1925). The fossil anthropoid ape from Taungs. Nature, 115, 235.

    Google Scholar 

  • Young, R. B. (1925). The calcareous tufa deposits of the Campbell Rand, from Boetsap to Taungs Native Reserve. South African Journal of Geology, 28, 55–67.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zuckerman, S. (1928). Age-changes in the chimpanzee, with special reference to growth of brain, eruption of teeth, and estimation of age; with a note on the Taungs ape. Journal of Zoology, 98(1), 1–42.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the John Templeton Foundation as well as the Center for Biology and Society, Arizona State University. Special thanks to Jane Maienschein, William Kimbel, and Michael Reidy for their guidance and feedback on various drafts. I am indebted to the editors of this issue, Kate MacCord and Elizabeth Dobson-Jones, for their comments, as well as to Christopher Dean for our thought-provoking discussions. Lastly, thank you to the reviewers for making this paper immeasurably better.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Arizona State University, P.O. Box 874601, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA

    Paige Madison

Authors
  1. Paige Madison
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paige Madison.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Madison, P. All things bleak and bare beneath a brazen sky: practice and place in the analysis of Australopithecus. HPLS 41, 19 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-019-0258-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-019-0258-x

Keywords

Search

Navigation