Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
the wembley exhibit
Such was the extent of public interest in Taung that Dart was invited
to prepare a display for installation in the South African pavilion at the
large British Empire Exhibit in Wembley, Middlesex. Although Wits
was not set up for casting, Dart was able to put together a team that
produced plaster copies of the skull and endocast that were painted to
look like the original fossils. A half-bust and a second, complete and
fully fleshed bust of Taung's head, neck, and shoulders (hair and all)
were also prepared, and copies were made to include with the exhibit.
These casts were duly mailed to the exhibition commissioner, Captain
E. F. C. Lane, who wrote to Dart on June 4, 1925, to say that they had
also informed Dart that he had shown the replicas to Elliot Smith, who
had brought some casts from a gorilla and four primitive humans to
illustrate human brain growth and who had agreed to write a brochure
that he proposed to have printed and affixed to the exhibit's glass case.
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Earlier, in the wake of finally seeing copies of Taung's remains, Elliot
Smith remarked publicly that the posture and poise of its head “were
essentially identical with the conditions met in the infant gorilla and
(by A. Forestier) that revised a sketch of Taung's reconstructed and
fleshed-out head that had been prepared under Dart's guidance, both
of which appeared side by side in the March 21, 1925, edition of the
Rand
humanlike ear and eye socket, a longer neck, and a more erect posture
than the revised version. Imagine, then, the apprehension that Dart
must have felt reading the rest of Captain Lane's letter, which referred
to the busts he had sent for the exhibit:
They are, I understand, built up on the supposition that the being whose
brain is represented walked erect. This is, I believe, your theory. In the event
of anybody holding the theory that your discovery belonged to a being who
did not walk erect, have you any objection to a plaster cast being introduced
