Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
his full monograph of his discovery, he will settle many points which
and teacher, Dart set out to do just that. It took him four painstaking
years to produce three drafts and multiple additional alterations (most
of them handwritten), but by 1929 he had finished a voluminous and
extensively documented monograph,
Australopithecus africanus: And His
Place in Human Origins.
This remarkable book contained detailed sec-
tions on the geology, bones, teeth, and endocast, as well as thorough
discussions about the “cradle of mankind” and “Africa as the cradle of
Royal Society in London for consideration for publication, which he
did. (This was appropriate, because Elliot Smith was a fellow of the
society, or an FRS.)
Dart was not informed of the fate of his monograph until he visited
London in February 1931 and learned from Elliot Smith that the Royal
Society Committee was not prepared to recommend publication of any
“Sir Arthur Keith had already told me that he had written an exhaustive
description of the cranial material for his forthcoming book on recent
anthropological discoveries, so I took my manuscript back to South
Africa in the hope that a more propitious occasion would present itself
in the future. The thorough analysis but adverse conclusions concern-
ing the fossil which I knew was soon to appear in Sir Arthur Keith's new
book reflected the British attitude.”
34
It is difficult to know exactly on what grounds the Royal Society
Committee rejected Dart's monograph or who was consulted about the
decision. Both Sir Arthurs (i.e., Keith and Smith Woodward) were Royal
Society fellows and would have been likely choices as consultants, given
the history discussed above. (Whether or not they would have been
objective reviewers is another matter.) Some hints may be found in
excerpts from the follow-up letter that Elliot Smith wrote to Dart on
February 25, 1931:
