Page 



EIGHT 



EVOLUTION 



1930 



The Man Ape of Taungs 



By ALLAN STRONG BROMS 



THE right man in the right place at the right 

 time." Dr. Raymond A. Dart, Professor of 

 Anatomy at the University of the Witwaters- 

 rand of South Africa in the fall of 1924. He had 

 come prepared to tackle the problem of man's or- 

 igin, bringing from University College, London, a 

 whole series of brain casts of apes and extinct hu- 

 man types, and with his mind full of Darwin's pre- 

 diction of 1871 that as the "African Apes present 

 the nearest likeness to Man in structure and ability, 

 it is somewhat more probable that our early pro- 

 genitors lived on the African continent than else- 

 where." 



Dr. Dart's enthusiasm had aroused his students 

 and colleagues to a wide search for human and re- 

 lated fossils, and so it was Dr. R. B. Young, the 

 Professor of Geology, who in November, 1924 

 actually found in a cave at Taungs the fragments 

 of rock which disclosed bits of bones and what 

 seemer to be a natural cast of a brain case. But it 

 was Dr. Dart who put in the months of skilful and 

 delicate work clearing off the fragile bones and 

 fitting them to the brain east to restore the form 

 of head and face, and who then identified in them 

 a young super-ape hinting at a South African or- 

 igin for Man himself. For this four or five year old 

 youngster (its age being revealed by its milk teeth) 

 had a brain too big for an ordinary ape, yet too 

 small for a human infant of its age. Other features 

 further enforced the suspicion that another im- 

 portant missing link in man's ancestry had been 

 found. As there was obviously a thrilling story here. 

 Dr. Dart went over the ground most carefully to 

 read it rightly and interpret it fully. Also he gave 

 his ape a name, Australopithecus africanus, which 

 means simply the Southern Ape of Africa. 



Taungs is eighty-five miles due north of Kimberly, 

 the famous diamond town, and on the main line of 

 the Cape to Cairo Railway. To the northwest 

 stretches the wide Kalahari Desert and everywhere 

 else are dry plains with very few trees. Fifteen 

 hundred miles to the north the Congo jungle be- 

 gins, the present home of the Gorilla and' Chimpan- 

 zee, nearest to man of the living apes. Between is 

 the wide barrier of treeless plain which no ape can 

 cross. Furthermore, the geologists tell us it has 

 been so for untold ages. 



But how did this ape of Taungs ever get so far.? 

 Because he was more than just ape. He was develop- 

 ing human capacities and adaptabilities. His kind 

 were probably slighter than the African apes we 

 know, but more wiry, alert and inventive. Other- 

 wise they would never have ventured out of the pro- 

 tecting jungle nor managed to survive in the open 

 and therefore dangerous plains country. Dr. Dart 

 is fully persuaded that on this scene the ape tribe 



of Taungs adventured on to become Man. He 

 states most persuasively : — 



"In order to achieve his so-called erect posture 

 and terrestrial mode of life, the monkey that was 

 to be man had to pass through a severe appren- 

 ticeship of . . . two initiatory phases before he en- 



Man-Ape of Taungs, right side view o£ skull 

 From Natural History 



tered the . . . true freemasonary of manhood. These 

 two phases were firstly, the semi-arboreal typified 

 by the living anthropoid ape ; secondly, the en- 

 tirely terrestrial man-ape phase. . . . The second 

 phase has been appreciated only as a theoretical 

 necessity, and the scene of its occurence has been 

 purely a matter of conjecture. The Taungs re- 

 mains show that this second phase was a living re- 

 ality; . . that the anthropoid achieved human status 

 by laborious passage through tlie terrestrial man- 

 ape phase ; finally they indicate, if they do not 

 actually prove, the quarter of the earth upon which 

 this penultimate act in the drama of liumanity was 

 staged. . . . 



"There is no woodland approach to Taungs from 

 the north, east, or west. This open and in large 

 part barren country, interposed between the tropic- 

 al forest and Taungs is, and has been from Cre- 

 taceous times, an effective barrier against the mi- 

 gration of the semi-arboreal anthropoids. . . It is 

 obvious . . . that the . . . group which forced this 

 barrier into the remote Southland had evolved an 

 intelligence (to find and subsist upon new types of 

 food and to avoid the dangers and enemies of the 

 open plain) as well as a bodily structure( for sud- 

 den and swift bipedal movement, to elude capture) 



