{"id":94313,"date":"2017-06-08T18:47:42","date_gmt":"2017-06-08T16:47:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/the-perversion-of-paleontology-by-apartheids-advocates-still-lingers-the-conversation\/"},"modified":"2017-06-08T18:47:42","modified_gmt":"2017-06-08T16:47:42","slug":"the-perversion-of-paleontology-by-apartheids-advocates-still-lingers-the-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/the-perversion-of-paleontology-by-apartheids-advocates-still-lingers-the-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"The perversion of paleontology by apartheid\u2019s advocates still lingers | The Conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The perversion of paleontology by apartheid\u2019s advocates still lingers<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Children gather around a fossil skull at a South African museum.<\/span> EPA\/Jon Hrusa <\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1925, Jan Smuts was both a prominent politician and an advocate for science. Just after the first of his two terms as prime minister of the Union of South Africa, Smuts served as president of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science. It was in this capacity that he spoke out about Raymond Dart\u2019s discovery of Australopithecus africanus<\/em> and his theories about the Taung skull, saying these ideas meant that<\/p>\n

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South Africa may yet figure as the cradle of mankind, or shall I rather, say, one of the cradles?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He remained in government at the time and actively supported the emerging discipline of paleontology \u2013 not just in speeches but in personalised contacts with the scientists who were birthing it. And so, as Christa Kuljan points out in her new book Darwin\u2019s Hunch: Science, Race, and the Search for Human Origins, from the beginning of the search for the \u201ccradle\u201d the role of state support \u2013 or lack thereof \u2013 was essential to how scientific research was conducted in South Africa. <\/p>\n

In the book, Kuljan examines the history of South African palaeoanthropology and genetics research as she tries to make sense of science, race and their links to the hunt for human origins. The \u201chunch\u201d she refers to was Darwin\u2019s idea, from 1871, that humans evolved in Africa. He was later proved right. But for a long time European scientists rejected his thesis.<\/p>\n

As an intellectual history of the disciplines of paleontology and paleoanthropology, Kuljan\u2019s book is especially adept at narrating the interwoven connections between science and power. There are shortcomings, too; she doesn\u2019t really grapple with ideas around identity, and could have explored some scientists\u2019 bizarre preoccupation with Spiritualism in more depth.<\/p>\n

The victory of the National Party (NP) in 1948\u2019s elections, as Kuljan shows, threw paleontology into a crisis. This wasn\u2019t only because the effusive support shown by Smuts was lost, but also because the meaning of the word \u201crace\u201d changed to suit the ideological ambitions of apartheid\u2019s advocates. <\/p>\n

The fate of race<\/h2>\n

Suspicion and complicity were united under the NP\u2019s rule. Religion rather than science was used as the foundation of race thinking. But at the same time individual scientists \u2013 paleoanthropologist Phillip Tobias being the most prominent \u2013 were repeatedly asked to endorse the existence of \u201crace\u201d and \u201craces\u201d. <\/p>\n

Tobias\u2019 behaviour when it came to race was ambiguous.<\/p>\n

In 1961 he published a paper titled \u201cThe Meaning of Race\u201d in which he questioned the academic usefulness of the category of race. But at the same time he was leading the \u201cCampbell Griqua Expedition\u201d which exhumed 35 skeletons of people identified as Griqua. This was one instance of blatant and criminal \u201cgrave digging\u201d by anatomists and paleoanthropologists.<\/p>\n

The exhumations reveal a blind spot of the era\u2019s paleontologists, like Tobias \u2013 one that even Kuljan does not observe. As far as we know the word \u201cGriqua\u201d is an invention. The people identified by the name are the epitome of hybridity in South Africa. Tobias and his team were looking for \u201cpure Koranna\u201d and \u201cpure Bushman\u201d. They were looking at the \u201cBushman\u201d once again as the \u201cmissing link\u201d \u2013 but that\u2019s exactly the opposite of what the Griqua were: from their first appearance on the frontier, they were understood to be a cultural melange of indigenous and enslaved forefathers. <\/p>\n

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<\/span> Jacana Media<\/span><\/span> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The failure to really dig into the question of \u201cGriqua\u201d identity is, I think, one of the glaring absences in Kuljan\u2019s account. She could have simply asked the question: what does it mean to erase \u201chybridity\u201d and replace it with \u201cpurity\u201d? By missing this step, the apartheid mania for racial purity is once again left untouched. <\/p>\n

Without this acknowledgement of the irrational, \u201cscience\u201d remains \u201crational\u201d \u2013 even while \u201crace\u201d seems to derail its assumptions and unhinge even the most talented minds. <\/p>\n

The metaphysics of science<\/h2>\n

This derangement is also evident in the frequency with which believers in the \u201cscience of Man\u201d \u2013 author J.M. Coetzee\u2019s term for the ethnological disciplines \u2013 resorted to Spiritualism. <\/p>\n

So, Kuljan writes, both John Robinson and Robert Broom \u2013 two of South Africa\u2019s most prominent paleontologists \u2013 were members or attended the meetings of the mystically-focused Theosophical Society.<\/p>\n

The collision of science and religion caused Robinson to cleave them apart, Kuljan explains, since he saw<\/p>\n

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science as explaining the material world, but he looked to his spiritual side to explore non-material aspects of the universe (page 127). <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He went even further by inviting a clairvoyant from New Zealand, Geoffrey Hodson, to Sterkfontein near Johannesburg to channel the life of the \u201cape-man\u201d via fossils. The Sterkfontein caves were quickly becoming the most attractive site for finding fossils. Colloquially, even scientists referred to these fossils as a confirmation of an ancestor who was an \u201cape-man\u201d. <\/p>\n

Robinson invited Hodson to conjure the life of an \u201cape-man\u201d since this was presumed to be the main characteristic of the human ancestor who became known as Australopithecus africanus<\/em>. <\/p>\n

These and other resorts to metaphysics are not as well explored in the book as they could have been. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not surprising that as human beings scientists can entertain crystal ball visions and table-tapping seances even while claiming to be materialists. The most enduring legacy of these vacillations is that it has bequeathed to us a rather conflicted image of our hominid ancestors.<\/p>\n

African Genesis goes viral<\/h2>\n

In Kuljan\u2019s book this conflict revolves around the place of violence in the emergence of homo sapiens. The scientists are not entirely at fault here since it was the sensationalism of Robert Ardrey\u2019s book African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man<\/em> (1961) that catapulted the fragmentary bones and skulls of southern Africa into a full-blown technicolour picture of a hominid ancestor who was a \u201ckiller ape\u201d. <\/p>\n

This reimagined violent ancestor is still with us not only in the continuing endeavour to \u201chumanise\u201d hominids \u2013 the liberal reaction \u2013 but also in the visceral attack on the recently discovered Homo naledi<\/em> by those who think of hominids as \u201capes\u201d. <\/p>\n

Somewhere in between lies the truth of our ancestors. Kuljan\u2019s book is a brave attempt to make this search for our ancestry a recuperable enterprise even while the \u201ckiller ape\u201d keeps escaping her scientific confines and invading the imagination of the popular \u201cscientist\u201d and naysayer.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

Hlonipha Mokoena does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Source:<\/strong> The Conversation \u2013 Articles (AFRICA)<\/a><\/small>
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Read more on The Conversation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The perversion of paleontology by apartheid\u2019s advocates still lingers: Children gather around a fossil skull at a South African museum. EPA\/Jon Hrusa In 1925, Jan Smuts was both a prominent politician and an advocate for science. Just after the first of his two terms as prime minister of the Union of South Africa, Smuts served […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4584],"tags":[22825,26214,8890,26215,26213,26212,5739],"class_list":{"0":"post-94313","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-africa-news-2","7":"tag-advocates","8":"tag-apartheids","9":"tag-conversation","10":"tag-lingers","11":"tag-paleontology","12":"tag-perversion","13":"tag-still","14":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}