Taung’s Checkered Past - The Fossil Chronicles - page 36

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Taung's Checkered Past

I could never have dreamed in even my most pessimistic
moods of the doubts—and in some cases scorn—that would
be heaped upon my conclusions. Raymond Dart

The valentine from London was the February 14, 1925, issue of Nature,
which Dart did not receive until near the end of the month. Its contents
were, to say the least, deflating for Dart on the heels of Taung's positive
debut. The editor had invited four scholars from the “British scientific
establishment” to express their opinions about the fossil from Taungs,
which they also did simultaneously in another prominent journal, the
British Medical Journal. 1 Significantly, three of the four were members of
the Piltdown committee: Sir Arthur Keith, Grafton Elliot Smith, and
Sir Arthur Smith Woodward. (The fourth was W. L. H. Duckworth,
who Dart thought offered the most favorable opinion.) 2
Despite their glowing remarks when Taung was first announced,
the opinions of the three advocates of Piltdown had quickly become
cautious and, at times, skeptical. Keith, for example, wrote, “When
Prof. Dart produces his evidence in full he may convert those who, like
myself, doubt the advisability of creating a new family for the recep-
tion of this new form. It may be that Australopithecus does turn out to
be 'intermediate between living anthropoids and man,' but on the evi-
dence now produced one is inclined to place Australopithecus in the same

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