Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

Alexander Graham Bell did, however, play an instrumental role in getting the National Geographic Society started. Although Bell did not give large sums of money, he hired Gilbert Grosvenor to supervise the publication of the Society’s magazine, and paid his salary from his own pocket for many years. When Grosvenor took over editorial duties in 1899, the magazine of the National Geographic Society was a dry technical journal, intended mainly for specialists in geography. He quickly transformed it into a pictorial magazine with vast popular appeal among the middle and upper classes.

Much of the considerable social influence enjoyed by the National Geographic Society has derived from its carefully cultivated relationships with America’s social and political elites. Its board of trustees has consistently represented a cross section of the aristocracies of money and merit. Gilbert Grosvenor himself, from an old New England family, was a cousin of William Howard Taft, who served as President of the United States and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Grosvenor married Alexander Graham Bell’s daughter, and his son Melville Bell Grosvenor followed him into leadership of the National Geographic Society.

Through its Committee for Research and Exploration, the National Geographic Society expends funds for scientific work in geography and related fields. Results are publicized not only through the magazine of the Society but through school bulletins, news releases, lecture series, films, and television specials.

Until the Society backed Louis Leakey, it had not, the record of its grants shows, supported any work directly related to evolution. Since then, however, the National Geographic Society has been one of the most influential forces in educating the general public, at least in the United States, about the story of human evolution. Exactly why the Society suddenly became so active in this field, starting in 1959, is not explained in any of the accounts of its history we have thus far seen. We would welcome information about this.

In the September 1960 issue of National Geographic magazine, Louis Leakey (1960b, p. 433) wrote, in a big photo article about Zinjanthropus: “In some respects this new Stone Age skull more closely resembles that of present day man than it does the skulls of the gorilla or of the South African near-men . . . Zinjanthropus represents a stage of evolution nearer to man as we know him today than to the near-men of South Africa.” The article, provocatively titled “Finding the World’s Earliest Man,” featured an artist’s representation of Zinjanthropus. Notwithstanding his huge jowls and low forehead, Zinjanthropus was depicted as blatantly humanlike—a shameless propaganda move.

But despite an outpouring of publicity, the reign of Zinjanthropus was all too brief. F. Clark Howell said: “It obviously was not a man. It was even less manlike than the least manlike of those two South African types” (Johanson and Edey 1981, p. 92). The two South African types were Australopithecus africanus (from Taung, Sterkfontein, and Makapansgat) and Australopithecus robustus (from Kromdraai and Swartkrans). Robustus was considered the least manlike.

Leakey’s biographer, Sonia Cole (1975, pp. 239–240), wrote: “He must have wished he could have eaten his words. . . . Granted that Louis had to persuade the National Geographic Society that in Zinj he had a likely candidate for ‘the first man’ in order to ensure their continued support—but need he have stuck out his neck quite so far? Even a layman looking at the skull could not be fooled: Zinj, with his gorilla-like crest on the top of the cranium and his low brow, was quite obviously far more like the robust australopithecines of South Africa than he was like modern man—to whom, quite frankly, he bears no resemblance at all.”

11.4.2 Homo Habilis

In 1960, about a year after the discovery of Zinjanthropus, Leakey’s son Jonathan found the skull of another hominid (OH 7) nearby in a slightly lower level of Bed I, judged to be about 2 million years old. In addition to the skull, the OH 7 individual included the bones of a hand. Also in 1960, the bones of a hominid foot (OH 8) were found. In succeeding years, more discoveries followed, mostly teeth and fragments of jaw and skull. The fossil individuals were given colorful nicknames: Johnny’s Child, George, Cindy, and Twiggy. Some of the bones were found in the lower part of Bed II.

Philip Tobias, the South African anatomist, gave the first newly found skull a capacity of 680 cc, far larger than Zinjanthropus at 530 cc, and larger even than the biggest australopithecine skull, at roughly 600 cc. It was, however, around

100 cc less than the smallest Homo erectus skulls (Wendt 1972, pp. 245–246).