Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

To this Dart (1959, pp. 120–131) replied that hyenas, in particular, do not tend to leave such accumulations of bones in their lairs. However, C. K. Brain replied with a more sophisticated version of the carnivore hypothesis that eventually won the day. “Over a period of years,” wrote Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin (1977, p. 96), “Brain observed that a combination of scavenging habits of local carnivores, and the differential resistance to weathering of various types of bone, produces a bone collection virtually identical to the one Dart found in the cave: the osteodontokeratic culture is apparently no more than the left overs from many leopard and hyena meals!”

Nevertheless, this version does not seem to account for some of the evidence reported by Dart. For example, Dart (1959, p. 166) told of finding a gazelle horn wedged solidly into the core of an antelope femur, clear evidence of an intentional act. Dart also noted that the bones of birds, turtles, and porcupines, not the normal prey of hyenas and leopards, were among those found in the cave.

Concerning the evidence for fire at Makapansgat, some researchers said the black deposits were not ash (Oakley 1954, 1956). Others claimed that although there might be signs of fire, the australopithecines were not the cause of them (Broom 1950, p. 74; Johanson and Edey 1981, p. 69).

But even though Dart’s views were discredited, there was a positive result. According to Herbert Wendt (1972, p. 222), the controversy over the Makapansgat discoveries “brought the australopithecines into the news, and enhanced their status even in the eyes of their original critics.”

Another key event was the publication, in 1946, of a monograph on the australopithecines by Broom and Schepers. The National Academy of Sciences of the United States gave Broom and his coauthor the Daniel Giraud Medal for the most important biological work published in that year.

Sir Arthur Keith wrote in 1947: “When Professor Dart of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, announced in Nature the discovery of a juvenile Australopithecus and claimed for it a human kinship, I was one of those who took the point of view that when the adult form was discovered it would prove to be nearer akin to the living African anthropoids—the gorilla and the chimpanzee. Like Professor Le Gros Clark I am now convinced on the evidence submitted by Dr. Robert Broom that Professor Dart was right and I was wrong. The Australopithecinae are in or near the line which culminated in the human form” (Dart 1959, pp. 80–81). At long last, Australopithecus had won recognition in the power centers of British paleoanthropology.

11.3.7 Controversy Continues

With the new status of Australopithecus came a change in perception. Increasingly, the vast majority of scientists began to see Australopithecus as less and less apelike and more and more humanlike. Right up to the present, the place of Australopithecus in the direct line of human descent is taken as an indisputable fact by most paleoanthropologists. Pictures of australopithecines generally show them as essentially human from the neck down. Furthermore, the types of behavior displayed by the australopithecines in these pictures are such that figures of humans could be easily substituted. But even after mainstream English science changed its mind about Australopithecus, some scientists resisted. To these recalcitrant renegades, the undistorted facts continued to reveal a starkly apelike portrait of Australopithecus. According to their view, a picture of an Australopithecus individual should show it hanging by its arms from the branch of a tree rather than walking erect and humanlike on the ground.

The primary dissenter, in the early aftermath of English acceptance of Australopithecus, was Sir Solly Zuckerman, secretary of the Zoological Society of London and later a science adviser to the British government. In a comprehensive study, Zuckerman (1954) found that the teeth, skull, jaws, brain, and limbs of Australopithecus were essentially apelike. He therefore believed that attempts to identify australopithecines as human ancestors were misguided. Today, a new generation of dissident researchers is raising and sustaining the same objections to overly humanlike characterizations of Australopithecus. We shall give detailed attention to their views, and those of Zuckerman, in Section 11.8.

11.4 Leakey and His Luck