How the Taung Child shook up the scientific world
- Brigette Cohen
Almost 100 years before calls to decolonise science, Taung was challenging researchers to reassess their internal biases.
The Taung Child turns 100 years old in 2025, officially making it an antique. Why was the find so important and how did it turn the nascent field of palaeoanthropology on its head?
By the end of the 19th Century, the principles of evolution were widely accepted in the scientific world. Although many fossils had been discovered, the hunt was on for the origins of our own species.
Big brains
In 1880 a Homo erectus, Java Man, had been discovered in Indonesia. Looking at this specimen, scientists concluded that the only way this fangless, clawless, awkward creature could possibly have survived was through superior intellect. Early humans, they decided, would be characterised by big brains.
This was reinforced by the discovery of the Piltdown Man in England in 1912. This creature had a big human-like skull (exactly alike as it turned out) and an ape-like jaw. However, the most important characteristic of the Piltdown Man was the location. Scientists of the time, almost exclusively European men, fully believed in themselves as the superior race and the idea that the origins of man would trace a direct path to them was deeply entrenched – an African origin for humankind was unimaginable.
African origins
Enter Raymond Dart in 1925, then head of the newly commissioned Wits Medical School, who announced the discovery of an African ape-man (Australopithecus africanus), which became known as the Taung Child. The fossil was discovered by labourers in a lime quarry in the Norther Cape. It was that of an infant and while it had many of the features that scientists were looking for, its brain was tiny. Some members of the scientific community did not react favourably to this discovery and Dart was discredited and shunned on all fronts. Vindication took 20 years, supported by the discovery of many more fossils in South and East Africa which showed that the big brain was a later development in human evolution. However, it was the exposure of the Piltdown Man as a hoax that really put the nail in the coffin of European claims.
Disrupting beliefs
Today, Africa is widely understood to be the Cradle of Humankind. The discovery of the Taung fossil disrupted debates on human origins – not because of what it was, but because it challenged what people wanted to believe. As recent history has shown, this is an ongoing process which South African palaeoanthropology will continue to advance.
- Bridgette Cohen is a freelance writer.
- This article first appeared in?Curiosity,?a research magazine produced by?Wits Communications?and the?Research Office.
- Read more in the 19th issue, themed #Disruption, which explores the crises, tech, research, and people shaking up our world in 2025.