Biology Reference
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bids the teaching of any theory contrary to the Biblical story of the
creation, or that man is descended from the lower orders of animals.
Similar legislation which is at present before other state legislatures
marks the growth of a strict Biblicist movement.” 50 And grow this move-
ment did, as detailed over 80 years later by historian Edward Larson,
who linked the negative attitudes toward the growing fossil record and
paleontologists to the “newfound militancy that characterized the con-
servative Christians from various Protestant denominations who called
themselves fundamentalists during the 1920s.” 51 Larson also noted that
this Biblicist movement drew together to support the prosecution of
John Scopes for teaching evolutionary theory to high school students
in Dayton, Tennessee.
Indeed, after the news of Taung's discovery broke on February 3, 1925,
things moved quickly on the anti-evolution front in the United States.
Governor Austin Peay signed the above-mentioned anti-evolution bill
on March 23, 1925; John Scopes was arrested about six weeks later; and he
was convicted of teaching evolution in the famous “monkey trial,” which
ended on July 21, 1925. Clearly, fundamentalists in the United States did
not want their children to be taught evolutionary theory in 1925—and
they still don't, as we will discuss when we get to Hobbit. Meanwhile, it
is interesting that, to this day, Taung continues to be interpreted within
a fundamentalist context by some believers. According to the well-
known creationist Russell Grigg, for example, “The best explanation for
the Taung child and all the australopithecines is that they were a type of
ape, unlike either modern apes or humans, which were created by God
on Day 6 of Creation Week, and which are now extinct.” 52
As we have seen, the hominin fossil record has always stirred intense
passions, not only in scientists, but also among the public. Why is this
so? Shading toward the purple prose for which he was criticized, Dart
pondered this question and offered as good an explanation as I've heard:
“Why is it that so simple, and so apparently haphazard a discovery is of
interest to scientist and layman alike? Why is it that amongst numerous
and seemingly more vital scientific discoveries the imagination of all
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