Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

Figure 11.5. Left: The infant Australopithecus skull from a quarry near Taung, South Africa, after a photograph by A. R. Hughes (Day 1989, p. 14). Right: The skull of an immature gorilla, after Eckhardt (1972, p. 95).

Dart also noted that the foramen magnum, the opening for the spinal cord, was set toward the center of the base of the skull, as in human beings, rather than toward the rear, as in adult apes. Dart took this to indicate the creature had walked upright, which meant the Taung specimen was, in his eyes, clearly a human ancestor.

Dart prepared a report for Nature, the prestigious British science journal, and sent it off to England. He also told B. G. Paver, news editor for the Johannesburg Star: “Perhaps I may shortly have news for you that will not be merely a good local lead. I may have something of worldwide significance connected with man’s origin to announce shortly” (Dart 1959, p. 23). Dart gave Paver, who was interested in anthropology, sufficient information to put together an article but made Paver promise not to print it until after his scientific report was published. Nature, however, held Dart’s article for review by other scientists. Paver became impatient and jumped the gun. He published his own story on February 3, 1925. The Nature article appeared four days later (Dart 1959, p. 34). Despite the plan going somewhat awry, Dart’s intuition was correct. He became an overnight celebrity, and letters of praise (and blame) began to pour in.

In his Nature article, Dart reported: “The specimen is of importance because it exhibits an extinct race of apes intermediate between living anthropoids and man” (Wendt 1972, p. 209). From the accompanying fossils, he estimated his find’s age at 1 million years, and called it Australopithecus africanus—the southern ape of Africa. Australopithecus, he believed, was ancestral to all other hominid forms.

Although public interest and adulation flared up quickly, reaction from the scientific community was substantially more reserved. In England, Sir Arthur Keith and Sir Arthur Smith Woodward received the report from Dart with utmost caution.

Sir Arthur Keith’s initial reaction was to give Dart the benefit of the doubt. Keith said: “Professor Dart is not likely to be led astray. If he has thoroughly examined the skull we are prepared to accept his decision” (Johanson and Edey 1981, p. 45). But Keith’s later pronouncements were negative: “one is inclined to place Australopithecus in the same group or sub-family as the chimpanzee and gorilla. . . . It seems to be akin to both” (Nature, Feb. 14, 1924). Some German scientists, such as Hans Weinert, also thought the Taung specimen was nothing more than an anthropoid ape.

The dating of the find also figured into Keith’s disapproval. “The Taung ape is much too late in the scale of time to have any place in man’s ancestry,” he wrote (Johanson and Edey 1981, p. 45). Dart had estimated that the Taung specimen was about 1 million years old. Keith had consistently held that human beings of modern type had existed for well over 100,000 years. But Keith’s ideas about the pace of evolution would not allow a transformation from a creature as apelike as the Taung specimen to modern Homo sapiens in so short a period of time.

Grafton Elliot Smith was even more critical. In his response to Dart’s article in Nature, he noted: “Many of the features cited by Professor Dart as evidence of human affinity, especially the features of the jaw and teeth mentioned by him, are not unknown in the young of the giant anthropoids and even in the adult gibbon” (Dart 1959, p. 36).

As time went by, Smith became increasingly unfavorable. In May 1925, in a lecture delivered at University College, Smith stated, in remarks reported in the Times of London: “It is unfortunate that Dart had no access to skulls of infant chimpanzees, gorillas, or orangs of an age corresponding to that of the Taung skull, for had such material been available he would have realized that the posture and poise of the head, the shape of the jaws, and many details of the nose, face, and cranium upon which he relied for proof of his contention that Australopithecus was nearly akin to man, were essentially identical with the conditions met in the infant gorilla and chimpanzee” (Dart 1959, p. 38).

Grafton Elliot Smith’s critique remains valid even today. As we shall see, despite the enshrinement of Australopithecus as an ancestor of human beings, several scientists remain doubtful. Anatomical features that to some scientists suggest incipient humanity fall for others within the ape family’s range of variation.