“There are serious doubts. . . .” wrote Smith-Woodward of Piltdown fame.
“. . . the distorted skull of a chimpanzee just over four years old, probably a female,” said Professor Arthur Robinson.
Not a hominid but an anthropoid ape, said Hans Weinert. Not a member of the human gallery, said Wilhelm Gieseler. Related to the gorilla, said Wolfgang Abel. And there were others. The consensus being that Dart’s child was a chimpanzee.
Only one ranking professional agreed with Dart. This was Dr. Robert Broom, who looked like everybody’s grandfather, who spoke with a Scottish burr, and who had become widely known—however implausible it may sound—for studying reptiles in the Great Karoo. He is described as a small, elderly gentleman who invariably wore a business suit with a high, starched collar, a black necktie, and a black hat. This was his uniform no matter where he happened to be, even in the bush. He was a medical doctor and part-time paleontologist who liked to collect things. In Ardrey’s eloquent phrase: “fossils, Rembrandt etchings, postage stamps, susceptible girls.”
A couple of weeks after Dr. Broom heard about the Taungs skull he came marching into Dart’s laboratory unannounced, ignored everybody, strode to the bench on which the skull rested, and dropped to his knees. He remained for the weekend as Dart’s houseguest and spent almost the entire time inspectingAustralopithecus. He agreed that it was an intermediate form of life.
Because of Dr. Broom’s reputation the skull became famous, so famous that witty young men would ask: “Who was that girl I saw you with last night? —is she from Taungs?”
But along with the simpletons, as usually happens, a few intelligent people spoke up. An editorial in the LondonObserver concluded with these lines:
There must needs be some who will say that the discovery of a damaged skull in subtropical Africa makes no difference. Admittedly it does not affect us materially like the discovery of wireless or electric light. The difference is in outlook. The stimulus to all progress is man’s innate belief that he can grasp the scheme of things or his place therein. But this stimulus compels him to track his career backward to its first beginnings as well as to carry it forward to its ultimate end. The more clearly he sees whence he has come the more clearly he will discern whither he is bound. Hence it is not an accident that an age of immense scientific advance produced Darwin with his Theory of Origins, or that a later period of social unrest has stimulated archaeologists to reveal the strength of the social tradition. Viewed in some such intellectual context as this, the Taungs skull is at once a reminder of limitations and an encouragement to further endeavour. Its importance, significant in itself, is enhanced by the fact that its message has been preserved through unimaginable ages for discovery here and now.
TheObserver’s thoughtful opinion did not convince everybody. Letters from around the world arrived at Dart’s office, warning him vociferously, emphatically, with magisterial certainty, that he would roast in Hell. The LondonTimes printed a sharp rebuke, addressed to Dart, from a woman who signed herself “Plain but Sane”:
“How can you, with such a wonderful gift of God-given genius—not the gift of a monkey, but a trust from the Almighty—become a traitor to your Creator by making yourself the active agent of Satan and his ready tool? What does your Master pay you for trying to undermine God’s word? . . . What will it profit you? The wages of the master you serve is death. Why not change over? What will evolution do for you when dissolution overtakes you?”
And, regardless of evolution or dissolution, Profit was much on the mind of a gentleman who owned property in Sterkfontein, northeast of Taungs, for he issued a pamphlet with this invitation:
“Come to Sterkfontein and find the missing link!”
Given any conversation about men, apes, evolution, and all that, somebody inevitably will use the phrasemissing link, often as a derisive question: “Why can’t they find it?” —followed by hostile laughter. The unmistakable inference being that the link can’t be found because it never existed, which proves that Archbishop Ussher must have been right. Oh, not 4004 B.C. exactly, but once upon a time the clouds split with a blinding flash, a huge Anglo-Saxon finger pointed down, and immediately the earth was populated with dinosaurs and cavemen. And if, let’s say, a bona fide living breathing furry link could in fact be produced—a specimen undeniably half-and-half—you may be sure it would be angrily rejected, identified either as a peculiar chimpanzee or as a hairy little man with rickets.
The skull seems to be the determining factor. If the skull looks reasonably human—well then, the owner must have been human. Otherwise it was some sort of ape.
Consider the brow, the jaw, the dome. Especially the dome. Is it high, capacious, handsomely rounded? —a suitable receptacle for a human brain? If so, we have Man. Hominidae. Glory of the universe.
Does it resemble a football? —flattened, unimposing, diminutive? Then we have Pongidae, brute keeper of the forest.
The problem with such attractive and shapely logic may be illustrated by the fact that Lord Byron’s brain measured 2,350 cubic centimeters while that of Anatole France measured just 1,100. It should follow, therefore, that Lord Byron was at least twice as intelligent as Anatole France. You see the brambles
