Taung’s Checkered Past - The Fossil Chronicles - page 47

and non-human animals, or the very idea of evolution, while Dart was
claiming that his child came closer to bridging the gap between human
and non-human than anything yet discovered.” 42 Indeed, as soon as the
discovery of Taung was announced, Dart began receiving letters from
religious fundamentalists from around the world, warning him of his
impending damnation (or worse). Given his fundamentalist upbringing,
one wonders how Dart felt about communications like the following
excerpt from a letter from France dated February 7, 1925, which was
addressed simply to “Professor Dart, Discoverer of the Taung's skull,
Witwatersrand, South Africa,” yet managed to get to him:
Sir: —the horrid ape-man hybrid and the inevitable punishment of
the flame. Let us hope that the wealth of the Sect [of ] the Evolutionists
will be poured out for your Terrestrial happiness. “Man hath but a short
time to live.” The quenchless flame that, on this Earth, melts the rocky
mountain like fat in a melting pot over a hot fire; will be found to be equally
hot in the depths of the world of hell. To put out this horrible hybrid of a
vile man's act, with some ape, as the ancestor of Man: is a gross mockery,
and an insult to the great Creator who made Man in his own pure and holy
Image: and, it will be adequately punished when you have “passed over to
the other side.” 43
Similarly emotional comments appeared in letters to newspapers and
arose from many pulpits. For example, the Reverend William Meara,
who preached at the Central Hall in Johannesburg on February 8, 1925,
said he “did not believe in the 'monkey theory of man's ancestry.'” 44
Dart also had supporters, of course, including some clergy who rec-
onciled the discovery of Taung with their religious views by invoking
ideas that were surprisingly similar to those used today in the name of
Creation Science or Intelligent Design. Thus, the bishop of Pretoria,
Dr. Neville Talbot, gave an interview to the Johannesburg Star that
appeared on February 19, 1925, in which he said there was nothing to be
alarmed about in the proof that was accumulating about the probability
that humans and apes came from an earlier common stock. “The curve
of life is ever upwards,” he noted. “Looking at life in that way, we see