Africa, the mother continent
Today, we know that the first steps toward humanity were taken
more than five million years ago on these dry
dangerous plains
But seventy years ago
when the forbidding caverns of Southern Africa
surrendered their first tiny skull
it ignited one of the greatest controversies
of 20th Century science
That fossil would spawn struggle and heartbreak
triumph and outright fraud
And its discoverer was Raymond Dart
What would humanity know of the world
if it had not been for the people who have discovered
We are not likely to know the future
until we know much more about the past
not only on Earth, but elsewhere
and that is what we are doing
We have learned about the moon during the last few years
These are all things that are obvious to anybody
who has got any brains
But most people enjoy not using their brains
and filling their bellies
Am I right or wrong?
Raymond Dart's discovery was the opening salvo of the skull wars
a brash challenge to the scientific wisdom of his day
In December of 1922
Dr. Raymond Dart embarks on
what will become the great adventure of his life
A two-week journey brings him to South Africa.
Dart feels cut off for the first time and cast aside
His specialty is the brain and his passion
human evolution
But no one has ever made an important discovery
about either in Africa.
But that will soon change through Raymond Dart's genius.
Dart arrives in Johannesburg with his American wife
Dora, and a few cases of laboratory equipment
I hated the idea of uprooting myself from
what was then the world center of medicine
with the giants of the profession
to take over the Anatomy Department at Johannesburg's University
He had come from London
the world center for the study of evolution
In the aftermath of the First World War
promising scientists from across the British Empire
had flocked to the city
Among them
the young Australian Anatomist
Raymond Dart
At University College
he met and worked with the giants of Anthropology:
Dr. Grafton Elliot Smith and Sir Arthur Keith
But after three years, Dart's dream job suddenly ended
Arthur Keith recommended
that Dart take a teaching post in distant South Africa
a decision the newly knighted Sir Arthur would live to regret
Johannesburg, in 1923
is a gold rush boom town that has exploded
from a village of twenty people
into a city of over one hundred thousand
It is a place for adventurers
where wealth is measured in ounces not dollars
The very idea revolted me
I did not have the slightest interest
in holding a professorship anywhere
least of all one newly founded utterly unknown
As remote as possible from libraries and literature
and devoid of every other facility for which I had yearned
But unknown to Raymond Dart
an awesome secret awaits his exploration far closer
than he dares to dream
At weathered limestone caves on the fringe
of the Kalahari Desert lie buried treasures
Bones that will lure him back
through the ages to the enigma of human origin
By comparison
the University laboratory seems to hold little promise
The architect had overlooked the necessity for water taps
electric plugs
gas or compressed air for the student laboratories
It was no good bemoaning our fate however
and with a new term only a month away
action was essential
With few teaching materials at his disposal
he asked his students to bring in any old bones
they may come across
In 1924, Dart's student Josephine Salmund
brings the skull of an extinct baboon
that she found being used as a paper weight
When Dart asked where it came from he is told
he quarry at Taung."
Four hundred miles away
dynamite at Taung has begun to reveal cave habitats of extinct baboons
Professor Dart is amazed
He has never heard of ancient ape fossils in Southern Africa
He requests that any interesting finds be sent to him
On the morning of November 28th 1924
two crates are delivered from Taung
Dart is about to host a colleague's wedding
I wrenched the lid off the first box
and my reaction was one of extreme disappointment
In the rocks, I could make out traces of fossilized egg shells
and turtle shells
and a few fragmentary pieces of isolated bone
none of which looked to be of much interest
Impatiently, I wrestled with the lid of the second box
still hopeful
At most, I anticipated baboon skulls
little guessing that from this crate was to emerge a face
that would look out on the world
after an age long sleep of nearly a million years
And, there is another treasure
the fossilized cast of a tiny brain
It was the brain cast that caught his eye
He was a brain-trained man
and he thought he could detect on
that brain cast certain features
which he knew were humanlike rather than apelike
In 1924, this is an astonishing concept
Most scientists doubt that Africa played any role in human evolution
But there was one exception: Charles Darwin
In 1871, he had predicted that in Africa
the home of the modern apes
we would find traces of the so called missing link
the first ancient apes that had begun to look
and behave like human beings
Raymond Dart thinks he may have found the skull
to prove Charles Darwin right
Although I had no experience in doing this
there was nobody to whom I could turn
Working away with a hammer, chisels
and knitting needle in constant fear
that the slightest slip of the chisel would shatter the relic within
no diamond cutter ever worked more lovingly
or with such care on a priceless jewel
My excitement grew as I became more convinced
that the whole face would be there
At night, I was in a fever of thoughts about cave dwelling apes
impatient for dawn to break
On December 23rd, the rock parted
I could view the face from the front
The creature was no giant anthropoid gorilla
What emerged was a baby face
an infant with a full set of teeth
I doubt if there was any parent prouder of his offspring
than I was of my Taung baby on that Christmas of 1924
In the eloquent silence of the ancient child eyes
Raymond Dart knows he has found the missing link
that Darwin prophesied
In that dim and distant past before man
had yet appeared on Earth
South Africa was peopled with a race of beings
who were vastly superior in intelligence
to modern chimpanzees and gorillas
These superior beings were more erect
relied on their feet for walking
and were more adept in the use of their hands
A creature neither a human being nor an ape but a creature intermediate
between the two
He was a person with the right bent of mind to handle that skull
Instead of dismissing it as a kind of off-beat African chimpanzee
that had taken the wrong pathway in its life
he saw that it was on the threshold of humanity and made so bold
at thirty-one years of age to claim that
Dart's announcement
that he has found the missing link in South Africa
will stun and amaze the scientific world
and touch off a bitter thirty year war of the skulls
London, 1925. With a brash stroke of confidence
the young Raymond Dart has rushed an article
about the Taung skull to the Journal
Nature, describing the South African fossil
he believes to be the missing link to human evolution
At first, reaction to Dart discovery is rather positive
even from England, Sir Arthur Keith
the most prominent Anthropologist of his era
But just one week later
the full impact of the unique skull sinks in
In an abrupt about face led by Keith
the British dismiss Taung
We do not know how old it is
It is dangerous to draw any conclusions
It was a baby chimpanzee
It was too young and geological...
Taung was a recent ape Piltdown was a man
The fossil was too young a child
Not human, not a missing link but an anthropoid ape
The Taungs skull from Africa contradicts
the favorite British skull
Piltdown Man
Thirteen years earlier
an amateur fossil hunter named Charles Dawson
had reported the discovery of an ancient fossil in a gravel pit
near the village of Piltdown
Piltdown Man appears to be a creature truly caught between man
and ape with a human sized brain and an apelike jaw
The cream of British science agreed
Piltdown becomes Sir Arthur Keith's holy relic
To him, it was the evolution of the rational mind
that set us apart from our animal ancestors
It was the expectation of people at the time
that our earliest ancestor came
became human in his brain
and brain size before it humanized in teeth and posture
And so, the comic picture, uh
of the cave man used to show a creature
that was hulking over with large fangs
usually dripping gore but with a large brain on top of that
The Taung child had a little brain
but humanlike teeth and a humanlike posture
It was totally contrary to the image
that had fixed itself in people minds
uh, before 1925
So far, the search for missing link skulls
has been confined to Europe and Asia
And some find it easier to imagine the white race having evolved
from Asians than from Black Africans
There was, uh, a bias on the part of many European anthropologists
and scientists against Africa and all things African
It was almost a racial prejudice against the African Continent
The Taungs skull has challenged everything the British establishment
believes about human evolution
But why such passion about one tiny skull?
The stakes are high. The issue what made us human?
For most scientists, it was the appearance of a large brain
that marked our break from the lowly apes
but the small brained Taung child suggests
that the path to humanity began with the body, not the brain
Raymond Dart finds himself trapped alone
in the middle of one of the most passionate debates of his time
Who are we and where do we come from?
If Dart wants to prevail he will need help, an ally
He finds one here in South Africa
Dr. Robert Broom, a contemporary of Sir Arthur Keith
a Fellow of the Royal Society of London
An expert, Broom has already sketched in one branch of the tree of evolution
by finding the reptilian ancestors of mammals
A hands-on experienced field scientist
Broom has spent twenty years searching South Africa for bones
He is also a trifle eccentric
He will do whatever it takes to protect his beloved fossils
February 8th, 1925. Dear Professor Dart
Your missing link is really glorious
Perhaps I may make a trip up to Jo’burg for a day
and pay my respects to my distinguished ancestor
With best wishes, Robert Broom
Broom was the only visitor
who knew from his own experience what this was
And when he came in, uh, it is it was on a table and he was
he was on his knees uh, uh, looking looking at this and
and, I said, "What on the Earth are you doing there?"
He said, "I am bowing before our ancestor."
Though nearly thirty years apart in age
the two men cement an alliance that will last the rest of their lives
Dart, the bold newcomer, and Broom the veteran field scientist
Broom was convinced that Dart was right
Broom was Dart bulldog
He was his great supporter
and it was Broom's destiny ultimately to find
the first adult of the same kind of creature as the Taung child
But if the two men agree on science they differ on strategy
Broom urges caution for their study
But Dart is convinced that seeing is believing
so he sends plaster casts of the Taungs skull to London in time
for the 1925 Wembley Exhibition of Science and Technology
At Wembley, Sir Arthur Keith
the most prominent Anthropologist in the English-speaking world
is forced to line up to see Dart's reconstruction
An examination of the cast exhibited at Wembley will satisfy zoologists
that this claim is preposterous
Keith is incensed
To him, it is unthinkable
that a small brained animal could be our ancestor
He condemns Dart's discovery as a mere chimpanzee
Keith's denunciation is blunt
Taung is an ape and Dart is a fool
The popular press takes up the theme
And at a time
when the theory of evolution itself is under attack
by some groups as anti-Christian
Dart becomes swept up in a bitter religious debate
In America, a Tennessee school teacher
named Scopes goes on trial for teaching evolution
The teacher is convicted
And the idea of our apelike origin is banished
from thousands of American classrooms
To scientists, by the 1920s
there is no disputing the common ancestry of apes and humans
What science seeks is the mechanism of evolution
the missing link between ancient apes and man
In South Africa
Raymond Dart knows he has held the missing link in his own hands
This forthright rejection of my beliefs made me feel
that leading anthropological opinion was ganging up on me
None of their arguments persuaded me
to deviate in the slightest from my earlier conclusions
Dart was a man of courage
A man who was willing to take chances and he often did
A man who was a heretic in science
He did not mind standing out against the
the flow of the tide
Battle upstream against the tide was how he did his science
But soon, Raymond Dart will coax new secrets
from the Taung child skull
The skull wars are far from over
At the close of the 1920s
Raymond Dart's revolutionary assertion
that Africa was the prehistoric cradle of the human race
has been dismissed as preposterous
Dart believes he has found the missing link
By day, Dart is preoccupied as the newly appointed Dean
of a University Medical School
But at night he works to expose the biting surfaces
of the ancient Taung child's teeth
After working on the fossil on and off for the last four years
I have been able to separate the lower jaw
from the upper jaw and to reveal clearly
that it is human in almost every detail
This was the mouth of a meat eater and in it
Raymond Dart beholds not merely a fossil
but a lost world recaptured
We never knew before an ape which lived on a cliff
or plateau on the fringe of the desert
It was an animal hunting flesh eating
shell cracking and bone breaking ape
I quite expected that this would cause trouble
because one was dealing with the history of the Earth
and how man came to be, how he rose and this would be
at one time, was the sort of thing
that his previous peoples had
had gone, had to go through in order to become men
To me, it was reality. What it is real
To eat like a human being
the Taung creature likely lived as one
Soon, Robert Broom sees the truth for himself
When Dart removed the lower jaw
it was seen that the milk teeth of the little ape
are exactly like those of human children
and not in the least like those of the chimpanzee or gorilla
Dart is ready to take on the world
In 1931, Dart travels to London armed with the skull to speak
at a crucial gathering at the Zoological Society
When I arrived in London early in February, 1931
I felt confident enough to tackle anything
Here, in my spiritual home
I was sure I could influence my colleagues to accept my belief
that I had bridged the gap between ape and man
But Dart is upstaged by news of a spectacular
new missing link from Asia Peking Man
In a cruel twist of fortune
the first man to speak is Grafton Elliot Smith
Dart original patron and mentor
Elliot Smith's impressive presentation hails the discovery
of Peking Man in China
and Peking Man seems to mesh exactly
with England's big brained Piltdown relic
The exceptional thickness of his skull
and the similarity of his architecture to
that of Piltdown Man
are unexpected features
affording strong confirmation of the kinship
of the early man of China and England
Once again, a large brained skull has overshadowed Raymond Dart
and his African missing link
I stood in that austere and chilly room, my heart pounding
I realized that my offering was an anticlimax
a pitiful difference between this fumbling account
and Elliot Smith's skillful demonstration
I could only stand there with the tiny skull in my hand
telling the audience what I saw as I looked at it
The rejection of the Taungs skull is total
Now, more than ever scientists look to Asia
and Europe as the home of the missing links
But soon the world will learn that the Taungs skull
is just the first of Africa's secrets
thanks to the incredible discoveries of a seventy year old fossil hunter
and a fourteen year old boy
Now working at the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria
Dr. Robert Broom though nearly seventy
moves to the front line of the war of the skulls
As there seems to be no other way of convincing the world
I resolved in 1936 to hunt for an adult skull
Broom needs an adult fossil
because many scientists think the Taung child
is too young to be conclusive
Everyone knows that the features of a species really emerge after puberty
Could you tell from a little baby boy of so
such tender years what kind of an adult it was going to grow up into?
So they said we want an adult before
we will be prepared to talk turkey with you
In August, 1936, Broom sets out on his quest
working on a tip from Dart
August 12th, 1936 My Dear Dr. Broom
One of my science students has been digging out fossils
from a cave deposit at Sterkfontein
and would be delighted to show you what he has found
Broom believes destiny will guide him toward a great discovery
He spots the skull of an ancient baboon
just like the one first found at Taung
four hundred miles away
And Broom wonders, could Dart apemen have lived here, too?
Broom finds he has an ally in the quarry manager
George Barlow, who has been collecting fossils also
not to study them
but to peddle them to tourists
Mr. Barlow, who supervised the quarry
was there to look after the visitors
Barlow had once worked at Taung
and knew something about the skull
On a large table he had a lot of specimens
that he had collected and sold to visitors
I asked him if he had seen anything like it at Sterkfontein
and he replied that he rather thought he had
On the Monday following August 17th, 1936
I was again at Sterkfontein and when I saw Barlow
he handed me a beautiful brain cast and said
"Is this what you are after?"
I replied, "Yes, this is what I am after."
It was clearly the brain cast of an ape-man
and in perfect condition
And so, the next crucial clue in the mystery changes hands
for a handful of change
For the next two days
joined by quarry workers and the staff of his museum
Broom combs the rock piles for more fragments
Again, fate guides his hand
He finds a partial skull with four distinctly humanlike teeth
With the help of the quarry master
Broom has found the next vital clue in the skull wars
Broom returns to Pretoria with the fossil he christens
"Miss Sterkfontein."
He writes to the one man he knows will share his excitement
September 18th, 1936. My Dear Dart
You will be interested to hear of the progress of Miss Sterkfontein
She has turned out to be a trump
The two allies meet every week
when Broom lectures in Dart's department
but Dart finds himself too overwhelmed
by his university duties to help Broom
analyze the Sterkfontein skull
Broom must tackle the fossil on his own
Miss Sterkfontein's facial bones have been crushed
and twisted by the weight of the rock that encased them
But the expert Broom envisions the bones
as they must have been in life
The teeth of this Sterkfontein girl are almost entirely human
and in my opinion
there can hardly be any doubt
that she is closely related to the ancestor of man
Here, at last, is a mother for the Taung child
Broom's skull proves that the Taung creature
belonged to an entire race of missing links
who once called Africa home
Now it is Broom turn to try to convince the world
that humanity arose of the dry plains of South Africa
In 1937, Broom is invited to the United States
to a conference on Human Origins
In New York, at the American Museum of Natural History
Broom enlists the support of one of the most
powerful men of American science
Dr. William King Gregory, an expert on fossil teeth
decides that Broom discovery is important enough to
bring him to South Africa to take a closer look
But at the conference
Broom finds Miss Sterkfontein is upstaged
A large brained fossil from Palestine grabs the spotlight
Yet again
a Piltdown like skull eclipses the small brained skull from Africa
Robert Broom returns to the South African quarries
to search for more specimens more proof
His uncanny luck continues
In June of 1938, his old ally Barlow
hands him a fragment of jaw bone
It has been found in a farmer's field
by a teenage schoolboy named Gert TaBlanche
Gert was soon found and drew from the pocket of his trousers
four of the most wonderful teeth ever seen in the world history
These are promptly purchased from Gert
I had the pallet with me and I found
that two of the teeth fitted perfectly onto the pallet
Gert told me about the piece he had hidden away
He took me up to the hill
and brought out from his hiding place a beautiful lower jaw
with two teeth in position
Broom concludes that this creature from the Kromdraai farm
was much bigger than the other African fossils
So more than one species of ape-man once lived here
on a continent most scientists had believed
had no role in human evolution at all
Soon after this vital discovery
William King Gregory arrives from New York
Broom shows him the caves at Sterkfontein
and the fields of Kromdraai The American authority
throws his reputation behind Dart and Broom
The expression, missing link is an inaccurate one today
Dr. Broom has found it It is no longer missing
There are now three important skulls
from Africa representing two species
but still the world believes that the big brained fossils of Europe
and Asia are the model of evolution
and one skull above all, is held up as proof
Piltdown Man, the British missing link, still revered
honored with a monument unveiled by Sir Arthur Keith
But there can be only one true missing link
and the moment of truth is near
The final battle of the war of the skulls
will include the exposure of one of the most infamous
scientific frauds of the 20th Century
By 1938, the large brained fossils of Europe
and Asia still impede the universal acceptance
of the African origins of mankind
They are championed by a man of extreme pride
and extreme power
Sir Arthur Keith, Piltdown's greatest advocate
This bitter contest for the truth has been fought since the 1920
but now the Second World War intervenes
In South Africa
as troops are mobilized to join the Allied forces
blasting at the limestone quarries is halted
and Dr. Robert Broom eagerly uses the wartime hiatus
to prepare his own scientific battle
Broom, at the age of seventy-two
in painstaking detail compiles a complete history
of the South African missing links
which Dart has called Australopithecus
First, the child from Taung the upright meat-eating hunter
Then, Broom own discoveries the Taung child's parent
Miss Sterkfontein and the second race of missing links
from young Gert TaBlanche's treasure trove
All creatures with humanoid teeth
small brains and erect posture
evidence that they had begun to live like humans
And Broom's book contains one more revelation
The rocks in the African caves containing the skulls
were much older than anyone had thought
For the first time
Broom has proof that the small brained African ape-men lived
before the big brained fossils Piltdown, Peking Man
Palestine Man and soon the world is convinced
Broom receives congratulations from around the world
Grudgingly, even the champion of Piltdown Man
Sir Arthur Keith writes to Robert Broom
March the 12th, 1946 My Dear Broom
I hasten to congratulate you on a magnificent piece of work
You have placed the Australs definitely
on the map of man's past
Dart began the job but it is entirely to you
to your sheer intuition
your energy and enterprise that has ended in such a harvest
A truce to the differences of opinion
I have acquiesced
Yours warmly, nay affectionately Arthur Keith
Finally, in a letter to the Publication, Nature
Keith surrenders to Raymond Dart
the man whose work he ridiculed for twenty years
I was one of those who took the point of view
that when the adult form of Taung was discovered
it would prove to be near akin to the living African anthropoids
the gorilla and the chimpanzee
I am now convinced that Professor Dart was right and I was wrong
By 1946, Dart and Broom are no longer outcasts
And as more and more evidence of primitive man
is found in the weathered gorges of South Africa
Robert Broom and Raymond Dart finally are hailed as pioneers
By 1950
the evolutionary pathway of the human race is becoming clear
The African skulls with their small brains
are the oldest missing links found so far
Taung, Kromdraai
Far younger, are the bigger brained fossils
Peking Man, the Neanderthals and finally Modern Man
But one mystery remains
England's Piltdown Man
The big brained skull with its apelike jaw is totally
unlike any other fossil
By 1950, so many more ape-men fossils
of Australopithecus had been found in Africa
that Piltdown had become a veritable enigma
And looking at the question one of Dart former students
Joe Viner, came to the conclusion
that the only way that it could be explained was
if it had been fraudulently salted into the gravel at Piltdown
We were traveling back to Oxford one evening
after a conference at which
we had been discussing the Piltdown problem
I was wondering how one could possibly
explain the curious contradictions of these finds
Will then it occurred to me that one possibility might well be
that someone had deliberately placed the parts of the cranium
with a broken jaw of a modern ape
Viner is exactly right
Laboratory tests show Piltdown to be an elaborate counterfeit
A human skull only five hundred years old
with the jaw of a modern orangutan
The jaw rapidly yielded critical evidence
The low left teeth had been filed down to
give a humanlike wear pattern rather
than an apelike wear pattern
The joints of the jaw
which joints at the base of the skull
that had been deliberately broken away so
that the telltale giveaway evidence was removed
The other giveaway evidence of an ape jaw is in the chin region
and that had been smashed away
The newspaper soon announced the death of a creaturen
that never lived
A sin against science that endured for more than forty years
but who was its perpetrator?
The shocking news of the forgery becomes a media event
a prime time topic for discussion on the BBC
First of all, have another look at the picture of Dawson
Here it is
This is the face of a fanatic
who would mislead his colleagues so cunningly for so long
or is it the face of an enthusiastic amateur who was hoaxed
and misled by some ill wisher?
Perhaps we shall know for certain one day
but perhaps we shall never know
What we do know...
And the Piltdown fraud continued to fascinate scientists
The suspicion lingered on
Where would Dawson have gotten an orangutan jaw?
Where would he have got a five hundred year old human skull?
So knowledge and access to material raised the thought
that Dawson must have had a co-conspirator
And forty years later, after 1953
Ian Langan of Australia Frank Spencer of New York
supported by myself came up with the
with evidence to suggest that the co-conspirator was none other
than the great British Anatomist Anthropologist
Sir Arthur Keith
If he was guilty
Sir Arthur Keith was responsible for selfishly blocking
the understanding of human evolution for nearly half a century
Keith's name tops a long list of suspects in a mystery
that may never be solved
The scientists who won the skull
wars lived long enough to reap the full rewards of their victory
In his fifty year career Robert Broom
the great fossil hunter
amassed more ancient ape-man skulls
than all the other scientists in the world combined
Robert Broom died in 1951
at the age of eighty-five
just before the exposure of the Piltdown forgery
Raymond Dart returns many times to the caves
and quarries of South Africa
and lives into his mid-nineties
the grand old man of the missing link
During his lifetime
Africa gives up a treasure chest of fossils
filling in the evolutionary tree of the human race
And since Dart's death
other scientists have made more spectacular discoveries in Africa
pushing the threshold of humanity back beyond Taung
And it all began with the discovery of a child's tiny skull blasted free
from a rocky tomb on the edge of the Kalahari Desert