Taung’s Checkered Past - The Fossil Chronicles - page 42

Sir Arthur Keith has attempted to show first that I called the Taungs skull a
“missing link,” and secondly, that it is not a “missing link.” As a matter of fact,
although I undoubtedly regard the description as an adequate one, I have not
used the term “missing link.” On the other hand, Sir Arthur Keith in an arti-
cle entitled “The New Missing Link” in the British Medical Journal (February
14, 1925) pointed out that “it is not only a missing link but a very complete
and important one.” After stating his views so definitely in February, it seems
strange that, in July, he should state that “this claim is preposterous.” . . .
Sir Arthur is harrowed unduly lest the skull may be Pleistocene [relatively
recent]. It is significant in this connexion that Dr. Broom . . . regarded it never-
theless as “the forerunner of such a type as Eoanthropus ” [Piltdown Man]. It
should not need explanation that the Taungs infant, being an infant, was
ancestral to nothing, but the family that he typified are the nearest to the pre-
human ancestral type that we have. . . . Sir Arthur need have no qualms lest
his remarks detract from the importance of the Taungs discovery—criticism
generally enhances rather than detracts. Three decades ago [Thomas Henry]
Huxley refused to accept Pithecanthropus as a link. Today Sir Arthur Keith
regards Pithecanthropus as the only known link. There is no record that Huxley
first accepted it, then retracted it, but history sometimes repeats itself . 24
(Once again, I am struck by the fact that today's acrimonious debates
about the hominin fossil record are nothing new.)
Another aspect of Keith's July 1925 letter to Nature is noteworthy,
because it touched upon the still-thorny issue of protocols for making
casts of new discoveries (or other relevant data) available to colleagues—
including cantankerous ones. Even though it had been only five months
since Dart published his initial report on Taung, Keith complained, “For
some reason, which has not been made clear, students of fossil man have
not been given an opportunity of purchasing these casts; if they wish to
study them they must visit Wembley and peer at them in a glass case . . .
in the South African pavilion.” 25 Today, such whinging would be seen as
premature, because it is understood that discoverers and their colleagues
may need some years to finish their preliminary analyses of fossils before
making copies available to others. After all, the discoverers went to the
trouble and expense (with or without grants) of finding the specimens, so
it is only fair that they should have first crack at analyzing them.