Freda Bedi Cont'd (#2)

[admin]

Order of Saint Lazarus
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/25/20

The Order of St. Lazarus & Jesse Helms:

Jesse Helms is also linked with the Knights of the Military and Hospitaller Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem, which was founded in Britain by Robert Gayre (publisher of the racialist Mankind Quarterly before Roger Pearson). The Order of St. Lazarus was also established in the U.S. by Lord Malcolm Douglas of the Cliveden Set:

"In the 1960s, a Briton named Robert Gayre had succeeded in founding a branch of the Order [of St. Lazarus] in Great Britain, accepting many non-Catholics as members. (The same Robert Gayre was involved...when an International Commission on Orders of Chivalry was created, with the main purpose of providing legitimacy to the Order of Saint Lazarus.) The duke of Nemours decided to open the order to them, but this led to another split, and Nemours was himself deposed and replaced by the duc de Brissac who, in 1980, abandoned the denomination of 'Order' and gave the association new statutes, calling it simply 'Hospitallers of Saint Lazarus'" 59.

"[Lady Malcolm] Douglas Hamilton is related to a British family that supported Hitler's war aims. When she and her husband came to the U.S., he helped establish a branch of the Military and Hospitaller Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem, an obscure racist-led network based in Scotland and tied to Jesse Helms." 60.

Scholars examining the relationship between right-wing politics and racial research have drawn on a 1979 work by social psychologist Michael Billig, Psychology, Racism, and Fascism, which argues that the origins of racist and neo-Nazi movements of the 1950s to 1970s are to be found in British social science. Robert Gayre's Mankind Quarterly is based in Edinburgh, Scotland, the location of the Order of St. Lazarus:

"Since it was established in 1960, The Mankind Quarterly has had the same overall editor -- Professor R. Gayre, M.A., D.Phil., Pol.D.Sc., D.Sc., a physical anthropologist trained at Edinburgh University. He was formerly Professor of Anthropology at the University of Saugor in India, but now is resident at Edinburgh, where The Mankind Quarterly is published ...Gayre's contacts with British fascists came to light when five members of the Racial Preservation Society were prosecuted in 1968 at Lewes under the Race Relations Act for publishing racialist material. At the time of the offence the Racial Preservation Society was an independent body, but by the time of the trial it had officially merged into the National Front." 61.

It was not by coincidence that the cloning of Dolly the sheep occurred at the Roslyn Institute in Roslyn, Scotland located 7 miles south of Edinburgh. Situated directly between Roslyn Institute and Edinburgh is Roslyn Chapel, the famous shrine of the Knights Templar that is geometrically designed as a copy of the ruins of Herod's Temple. Near Roslyn Chapel is the home of the St Clair or Sinclair family 62., which have historically been revered as prominent Freemasons of Britain and a sacred family of the Merovingian bloodline. The esoteric interpretation of Dolly compares the white sheep to Christ, whose divine and immortal state the racial eugenicists hope to duplicate through biotechnology. According to news reports, the cloning of the first human embryo occurred in 1999 on June 24, which is the Masonic feast of St. John the Baptist, patron saint of Freemasonry. 63.

-- The Council for National Policy, by Barbara Aho

Students of Anthroposophy are well aware that Rudolf Steiner taught that Lazarus and John were the same individual and that he has incarnated continually throughout history. One of the most significant of his incarnations occurred when John incarnated as Christian Rosenkreutz in the 14th century.

-- Uncovering the Secret of “THE M”: The Adept Behind the Western Tradition, by Richard Cloud

Before Christ provided an example though his own resurrection, he had already awakened many others -- such as Lazarus. Roll away the "Sodomite stone," that is the command of the Savior, by which he helps Lazarus "rise." In the "Awakening of Drusianas and Calimachus" of Roswitha von Gandersheim a serpentine monster escapes from the burial chamber. John banishes the serpent. Among the Egyptians the ape was the god of the dead. Driving out the Devil is therefore literally and actually to be understood as the driving out of sex-apes. Thus Jesus chases seven sex-demons away from Mary Magdalene (Lk. VIII.2). The apostles did similar things on their missions. Because they took away the greatest sensual pleasures from men and women the bitter feelings of the Sodomite Greeks, Romans and occidental peoples, and the persecutions which came as a result of these feelings, can be understood. If the Sodomite grave was a trap for many, the burial of Jesus was glorious. (Is. IX. 10). Jesus did not remain among the mob of Sodomite monsters, he overpowered the Sodomite grave-stones, the Sodomite guards, he hurled the Sodomite linens away. It is noteworthy that after his resurrection Magdalene could consider Jesus to be Kepoyros = Priapus. This event again proves that Christ also had the external appearance of an archanthropos. Tertullian (de resurr. carnis VI) also says that the heavenly man in Gen. I.26 is man made according to the model of Christ. "Rise, Lord ... you have smashed the teeth of the resha'im" (Ps. III.8). Obviously monsters with their fangs are meant here...

The time has come! The old Sodomite brood in the Middle East and all around the Mediterranean is degenerate and wretched, the one-time Paradisiacal fields are completely exploited and plundered like a wheat-field in which a thievish hoard of apes has taken up residence. Our bodies are infected with a mange which despite every kind of soap remains udumu-ized, pagutu-ized and baziat-ized. Never has human life been as miserable as it is today -- despite all its technical advancements. Devilish human beasts oppress us from above, slaughtering millions of people in unconscionably murderous wars conducted for the enrichment of their personal money-bags. Savage human beasts undermine the pillars of culture from below. Mankind is putrid like Lazarus and already exudes the stink of Sodomite death. What do you want with Hell in the Beyond?! Isn't the one we are living in now, and in which we are now burning, terrible enough? A time has once more come when Creation anxiously awaits the arrival of a God-man (Rom. VIII.10).

-- Theozoology, or the Science of the Sodomite Apelings and the Divine Electron, by Dr. Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels

-- The City of the Sun: A Poetical Dialogue between a Grandmaster of the Knights Hospitallers and a Genoese Sea-Captain, his guest, by Tommaso Campanells

-- Knights Hospitaller, by Wikipedia

Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem
Successor Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus (Italian branch, since 1572)
Formation: Circa 1098/1119
Extinction: 1572/1830
Type: Military order
Purpose: Nursing
Membership: Catholic
Official language: Latin
Patron Saint: Saint Lazarus
Parent organization: Catholic Church
Affiliations: House of Savoy (1572); House of Bourbon (1609–1824/1830)
Website saintlazarus.org

The Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem, also known as the Leper Brothers of Jerusalem or simply as Lazarists, was a Catholic military order founded by crusaders around 1119 at a leper hospital in Jerusalem, Kingdom of Jerusalem, whose care became its original purpose, named after their patron saint, Lazarus.[1][2][3]

Luke 16:19–31, New International Version:

"There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

"The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.'

"But Abraham replied, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 26And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.'

"He answered, 'Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.'

Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.'

"'No, father Abraham,' he said, 'but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.'

"He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'"

-- Rich man and Lazarus, by Wikipedia

It was recognised by King Fulk of Jerusalem in 1142 and canonically recognised as a hospitaller and military order of chivalry under the rule of Saint Augustine in the Papal bull Cum a Nobis Petitur of Pope Alexander IV in 1255. Although they were centered on their charism of caring for those afflicted with leprosy, the knights of the Order of Saint Lazarus notably fought in the Battle of La Forbie in 1244 and in the Defense of Acre in 1291.[4] The titular seat was successively situated at Jerusalem, Saint-Jean-d'Acre and - after the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem - split in two main branches in Italy and in Château Royal de Boigny-sur-Bionne in France.[5]

In 1489, Pope Innocent VIII attempted to merge the order and its land holdings with the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. This was resisted by the larger part of the jurisdictions of the Order of Saint Lazarus including those in France, Southern Italy, Hungary, Switzerland, and England. The Order of Malta only managed to appropriate the Lazarus holdings in Germany.

In 1572, the Order of Saint Lazarus in Italy was merged with the Order of Saint Maurice under the Royal House of Savoy to form the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus, which still exists until today, widely recognised as a dynastic successor of the Italian branch.[6] This merger however excluded the holding in the southern part of Italy, then forming part of the Spanish realm. These were transformed into ecclesiastical benefices. The Duke of Savoy only managed to gain control of those benefices sited in the duchy of Savoy.

In 1608, King Henry IV of France, with the approval of the Holy See, linked the French section administratively to the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel to form the Royal Military and Hospitaller Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem united. This branch became closely linked to the Royal Crown during the 18th century with the serving grand masters then being members of the Royal family. It suffered the consequences of the French Revolution, and went into exile along with its grand master Louis-Stanislas-Xavier, Comte (count) de Provence, king-in-exile Louis XVIII. It formally lost its Royal protection in 1830 and then ceased to remain listed as of royal protection in the French Royal Almanac.[7][8][9]

The word lazarette, in some languages being synonymous with leprosarum, is believed to also be derived from the hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus, these edifices being adopted into quarantine stations in the fifteenth century when leprosy was no longer the scourge it had been in earlier centuries.[10]

History

Crusades

The military order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem originated in a leper hospital founded in the twelfth century by crusaders of the Latin Kingdom. There had been earlier leper hospitals in the East, of which the Knights of St. Lazarus claimed to be the continuation, in order to have the appearance of remote antiquity and to pass as the oldest of all orders. According to Charles Moeller, "this pretension is apocryphal";[11] but documentary evidence does confirm that the edifice was a functioning concern in 1073.[12]

The Order of St. Lazarus was purely an order of hospitallers in the beginning, and adopted the hospital Rule of St. Augustine in use in the West. The Order assumed a military role in the 12th century.[4] The Lazarists wore a green cross upon their mantle.[13][14]

Hospitals dependent on the Jerusalem leprosarium were eventually established in other towns in the Holy Land, notably in Acre, and in various countries in Europe particularly in Southern Italy (Capua), Hungary, Switzerland, France (Boigny), and England (Burton Lazars).[15] Louis VII of France, on his return from the Second Crusade, gave it the Château of Broigny, near Orléans in 1154. This example was followed by Henry II of England, and by Emperor Frederick II.[11]

In 1154, King Louis VII of France gave the Order of Saint Lazarus a property at Boigny near Orléans which was to become the headquarters of the order outside of the Holy Land. Later, after the fall of Acre in 1291 the Knights of St. Lazarus left the Holy Land and moved first to Cyprus, then Sicily and finally back to Boigny, which had been raised to a barony in 1288.

The Order remained primarily a hospitaller order but did take part in a number of battles. After the fall of Jerusalem in July 1244 and the subsequent Battle of La Forbie the following October, the Order of St. Lazarus, although still called "of Jerusalem", transferred to Acre, where it had been ceded territory by the Templars in 1240. The Ordinis Fratrum & Militum Hospitalis Leprosorum S. Lazari Hierosolymitani under Augustinian Rule was confirmed by Papal Bull Cum a Nobis Petitur of Pope Alexander IV in April 1255. In 1262 Pope Urban IV assured it the same immunities as were granted to the monastic orders.

Late medieval period

The order quickly abandoned their military activities after the fall of Acre in 1291.[15] As a result of this catastrophe the leper hospital of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem disappeared; however, its commanderies in Europe, together with their revenues, continued to exist. In 1308 King Philip IV of France gave the order his temporal protection.[citation needed]

In 1490, Pope Innocent VIII attempted to amalgamate the order and transfer its possessions to the Knights of St. John. Although this was confirmed in 1505 by Pope Julius II, the Order of Saint Lazarus resisted this move and the order of St. John never came into possession of this property except in Germany. In France, the Bull of suppression was ignored and French Grand Masters appointed.[citation needed] The order of Saint John claimed the possession of the French holdings but their claim was legally rejected in 1547 by the Parliament of Paris.

In 1565 Pope Pius IV annulled the Bulls of his predecessors and restored all possessions to the order so that he might give the grand magistry to a favorite, Giovanni de Castiglione. But the latter did not succeed in securing the devolution of the commanderies in France. By the end of the 16th century, the order had retained a significant presence only in France and in Italy.

Continuations after 1572

Royal House of Savoy


Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy (1528–1580), founder and first Grand Master of the amalgamated Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus, recognised in 1572 by Pope Gregory XIII.

Main article: Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus

With the death of the papal favorite, Castiglione, in 1572, the grand magistry of the order was rendered vacant and Pope Gregory XIII united the Italian branch with the Order of Saint Maurice to set up the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus. This order was then linked in perpetuity with the Crown of Savoy and thenceforth the title of its Grand Master was hereditary in that house.

By the time of Pope Clement VIII the order had two houses, one at Turin, was to contribute to combats on land, while the other, at Nice, had to provide galleys to fight the Turks at sea. But when thus reduced to the states of the Duke of Savoy, the order merely vegetated until the French Revolution, which suppressed it. In 1816 the King of Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel I, re-established the titles of Knight and Commander of Sts. Maurice and Lazarus, as simple decorations, accessible without conditions of birth to both civilians and military men.[11]

This became a national order of chivalry on the unification of Italy in 1861, but has been suppressed by law since the foundation of the Republic in 1946. Since 1951 the order has not been recognized officially by the Italian state. However, the House of Savoy in exile continued to bestow the order. Today, it is granted to persons eminent in the public service, science, art, letters, trade, and charitable works.

Royal House of France


Louis XVIII (1755–1824) with the Order of Saint Lazarus grand cross

Main article: Royal Military and Hospitaller Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem united


Peter Ludwig von der Pahlen (1745–1826) with the Order of Saint Lazarus knight cross


Russian General Alexander Suvorov (1730-1800) with the Order of Saint Lazarus knight cross

In 1604, Henry IV of France re-declared the French branch of the order a protectorate of the French Crown. King Henry IV founded in 1608, with the approbation of Pope Paul V, the Order of Notre-Dame du Mont-Carmel. He then, in turn, united to this new order the possessions of St. Lazarus in France, and such is the origin of the title Ordres Royaux, Militaires & Hospitaliers de Saint Lazare de Jérusalem & de Notre-Dame du Mont-Carmel réunis ("Royal, Military, and Hospitaller Orders of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and St. Lazarus of Jerusalem united"). This amalgamation eventually received formal canonical acceptance on 5 June 1668 by a bull issued by Cardinal Legate de Vendôme under Papal authority of Clement IX.

Unlike the situation with the Savoyian Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus where a complete merger took place creating one order, the French branch was not completely merged with the Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and the orders were managed as two separate entities, with individuals being admitted to one order but not necessarily to both.[16]

During the French Revolution, a decree of 30 July 1791 suppressed all royal and knightly orders in France. Another decree the following year confiscated all the Order's properties. The Holy See, which had originally created the Order, on the other hand did not suppress the order;[citation needed] while Louis, Count of Provence, then Grand Master of the order, who later became Louis XVIII, continued to function in exile and continued admitting various dignitaries to the order.[17]

Scholars differ in their views regarding the extent to which the Order remained active during and after the French Revolution. There is however no doubt of its continuing existence during this time. In different museums, there are preserved a number of paintings of Russian and Baltic nobles, admitted to the order after 1791. In this list are general John Lamb, Prince Suvorov, count Pahlen, count Sievers etc. Some of the new knights are listed in Almanach Royal from 1814 to 1830. King Louis XVIII, the order's protector, and the duc de Châtre, the order's lieutenant-general, both died in 1824. In 1830, a royal decree caused the order to lose its royal protection in France.

See also

• Christianity portal
• War portal
• Grand Masters of the Order of Saint Lazarus

Successors

• Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus
• Royal Military and Hospitaller Order of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem united

In popular culture

• The Order of Saint Lazarus is depicted in season two of the television series Knightfall.
• A fictionalized version of the Order is depicted in the television series A Discovery of Witches.

References

1. Savona-Ventura, Charles (October 2008). "The Order of St Lazarus in the Kingdom of Jerusalem". Journal of the Monastic Military Orders. 1: 55–64.
2. Bellesheim, Alphons (1887). History of the Catholic Church of Scotland: From the Introduction of Christianity to the Present Day. Blackwood. Lazarists. David likewise established at Harehope the military order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem, which had another house at Linlithgow.
3. Wise, Terence (2012). Knights of Christ. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781780966427. The new Order had its own church and convent by 1142, and by 1147 was known as the Leper Brothers of Jerusalem. By 1155 the Order had houses in Tiberias and Ascalon, and later in Acre and possibly Caesarea and Beirut. By the mid-12th century the Order had also developed a force of military brethren, but they were never very numerous, and the Order remained principally preoccupied with the hospitaller role. A few non-leper brethren were included in the Order as knights, and leprous knights almost certainly took up arms when necessary. There were also lay brethren-sergeants, recruited from commoners suffering from leprosy.
4. Wise, Terence (2012). Knights of Christ. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781780966427.
5. "Constitution of The Order". The Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem. 2015. Archived from the original on 29 June 2015. Retrieved 25 May 2015.
6. The Living Age, Volume 121. Littell and Gay Publishers. 1874. This ideas was not realized; but in 1572 the Lazarists were joined to the Order of St. Maurice of Savoy, and the two together constitute the present Italian Order of St. Maurice and St. Lazare.
7. Moeller, Charles. "The Military Orders." The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 10. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. 22 Jun. 2015
8. "The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia: Cyclopedia of names". Century Company. 1 January 1906 – via Google Books.
9. "Almanach Royal pour l'anné 1770-1830".
10. Takeda, Junko Thérese (2011). Between Crown and Commerce - Marseille and the Early Modern Mediterranean. Maryland, USA: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 118.
11. Moeller, Charles. "Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem." The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 9. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. 22 Jun. 2015
12. Savona-Ventura, Charles (October 2018). "A Hospitalis infirmorium Sancti Lazari de Jerusalem before the First Crusade". Acta Historiae Sancti Lazari Ordinis. 2: 13–26.
13. Porter, Whitworth (1871). Malta and Its Knights. Pardon and Son. p. 14.
14. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume CXV. The Leonard Scott Publishing Company. 1874. p. 494. There were four of each : the Hospitallers, the Templars, the Teutonic Knights, and the Lazarists in Palestine ; and the brotherhoods of Calatrava, Santiago, Alcantara, and Avis in the Peninsula. All these fraternities were established in order to help the weak and fight the Saracen; yet, nothwithstanding this general similarity of object, each of them had a special character of its own which distinguished it from the others.
15. Marcombe, D. (2003). Leper Knights: The Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem in England, 1150-1544. Woodridge: Boydell Press. ISBN 1-84383-067-1.
16. Grouvel, Robert. L'Ordre de Notre-Dame du Mont-Carmel et l'École Royale Militaire (1779-1787). Carney de La Sabretache, 1967, p.352-356.
17. Sainty, Guy Stair, ed. (2006) World Orders of Knighthood and Merit, p. 1862

Bibliography

• Bander van Duren, Peter (1995). Orders of Knighthood and of Merit-The Pontifical, Religious and Secularised Catholic-founded Orders and their relationship to the Apostolic See. XLV-XLVII. Buckinghamshire.
• Burgtorf, Jochen (2006). Alan V. Murray (ed.). "Siege of Acre, 1291". The Crusades: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. I. OCLC 70122512.
• Coutant de Saisseval, Guy (nd). Les Chevaliers de Saint Lazare de 1789 à 1930. Drukkerij Weimar by the Hague.
• Environ (1295), Constitution, règlements et nécrologie de Seedorf (Suisse).
• Marcombe, David (2003). Leper Knights. Boydell Press. ISBN 1-84383-067-1.
• Morris of Balgonie Ygr., Stuart H. (1986). The Insignia and Decorations of the Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem. Perthshire.
• Sainty (ed.), Guy Stair (2006). World Orders of Knighthood and Merit.
• Savona-Ventura, Charles (2014). The History of the Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem. New York: Nova Publishers.

Further reading

• Belloy, Pierre de (1622) [1604]. De l'origine et institution des divers ordres de chevalerie tant ecclésiastiques que prophanes (2nd edition Toulouse ed.). Paris.
• Elphinstone, Francis (November 1962). The Opponents of St Lazarus which appeared. The Armorial. III. Edinburgh.
• de Sibert, Gautier (1772). History of The Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem. Paris.
• Military History Online - Order of St.Lazarus in the Latin East
• Seward, Desmond (1995). The Monks of War: The Military Religious Orders. London: Penguin Group.
• Bander van Buren, Peter (1995). "The Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem from the book: Orders of Knighthood and Merit: The Pontifical, Religious and Secularised Catholic-founded Orders and their relationship to the Apostolic See". Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe. Archived from the original on 2011-07-21. Retrieved 2007-05-18.

External links

• Wikisource: "Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem". Catholic Encyclopaedia (1913)

[admin]

Racial Preservation Society
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/25/20

The Racial Preservation Society was a far-right pressure group opposed to immigration and in favour of white nationalism, national preservation and protection in the United Kingdom in the 1960s.

Background

Although parties such as the Union Movement, the British National Party [BNP] and the National Socialist Movement organised at the time, much of the opposition to immigration in Britain during the early 1960s was locally based, centering on groups such as the Southall Residents Association and the Birmingham Immigration Control Association, groups that sought to influence local policy makers within the Conservative and Labour parties.[1] Attempts were made to co-ordinate the work of like-minded groups across Britain, although many of these initiatives, such as Tom Finney's English Rights Association or Tom Jones' Argus British Rights Association did not have the organisational basis required to forge any meaningful unity.[1] It was against this backdrop that the RPS first emerged.

Formation

The first arm of the RPS was founded in Brighton in 1965 by Robin Beauclaire and Jimmy Doyle.[2] With this group covering the South, a second group was established, covering the Midlands and utilising the existing structure of the Argus British Rights Association.[1] Ray Bamford, the chaplain to the BNP's youth movement and a well-known writer on racial issues for far-right magazines in both Britain and Germany, was chosen to link the two groups as vice-chairman of each. A veteran of the Scottish Conservative Party and a member of a variety of right-wing clubs and societies, Bamford was prized for his organisational capabilities and his list of contacts.[3]

Acting as a co-ordinating body for local groups, whilst allowing its affiliates some degree of independence, the RPS, backed by Bamford's wealth, produced copious amounts of anti-immigration newsletters, ranging from the RPS News to regional titles such as the Sussex News and Midlands News.[4] A number of its leading members, including Doyle, Ted Budden and Alan Hancock, shared a background as members of the British Union of Fascists before the Second World War.[5]

Activities

The movement functioned as a propaganda group without branching into politics (although individual members were free to join political parties) and provided extensive lists of conspiratorial books and pamphlets for sale.[6] Of these the most extreme was Colin Jordan's Fraudulent Conspiracy, a work dealing with supposed conspiracy to control the world between international finance and Judaism.[7] As well as publishing a number of books and pamphlets, the RPS also produced a regular newspaper, The Southern News, generally filled with horror stories about immigrants. The group accepted all types of members if they agreed on restricting immigration: thus, members of the Conservative Party were amongst early RPS activists before the group's true aims were clear.[2] The RPS itself was never a political party and never attempted to organise as one.[8]

Merger attempts

A growing force, the RPS was approached by John Tyndall in early 1966, with a request that it should merge with his Greater Britain Movement and the BNP. The request was immediately rejected by the RPS, as the group had no desire to surrender its separate existence.[9] Despite this, leading member Dr David Brown did agree to work with the BNP under the new name of the National Democratic Party later that year.[9] This plan broke down quickly, however, as Bean, who had been convinced of the need for unity, was uncomfortable at the thought of banning the GBM altogether whilst he also rejected Brown's insistence on being sole leader.[9] Meanwhile, the elements of the RPS under Jimmy Doyle also withdrew from merger discussions, as Doyle had a personality clash with leading BNP men Bean and Philip Maxwell.[10]

By this time, Beauclaire had become associated with the BNP, and when this group opened negotiations with the League of Empire Loyalists in late 1966, Beauclaire made it clear that he would bring a substantial group of RPS members into any new initiative.[11] Beauclair and his followers made up a significant proportion of the 2,500 members that the new group, to be known as the National Front, claimed when it was brought into existence on 7 February 1967.[12] By this time the RPS brought both international contacts and a number of rich backers to the NF, as well as its extensive experience of publishing.[13] However, despite effectively throwing its lot in with the NF, the RPS continued its independent existence.[14]

Later years

The group was prosecuted under the Race Relations Act in 1968 at Lewes Crown Court when five members were brought up on charges of incitement to racial hatred for distributing the Society's Southern News. The case, which had initially been brought in 1967, saw the creation of a Free Speech Defence Committee which sought to raise funds for the "five British patriots" accused.[15] However, they managed to argue that the articles attacking "race mixing" were intended only to educate politicians on the dangers of immigration and the case was dismissed.[16] The articles for which the case was brought had been purposefully written in non-inflammatory prose, making prosecution difficult to ensure.[17] Amongst those to testify on behalf of the defendants was Robert Gayre, the founder of the Mankind Quarterly.[18] The case was a blow to the recently passed Race Relations Act 1968, under the terms of which the RPS were the first group to be charged, as it exposed the loopholes in the legislation.[19] The following issue of the Southern News celebrated the win by adding the tagline "The Paper the Government Tried to Suppress" to its masthead.[20]

By the 1970s, the RPS was controlled by members of the Northern League, who used it to publish the journal Race and Nation, with Budden, Denis Pirie and Alan and Anthony Hancock involved in this initiative.[2] During the struggle between John Tyndall and John Kingsley Read for the leadership of the NF, and the subsequent emergence of the National Party, the RPS returned to some prominence, as Tyndall heavily featured the racial theories that the RPS was publishing in his magazine Spearhead, reasoning that the populists leading the NP had a reputation for being "soft" on the race issue amongst NF activists.[21]

References

1.      Martin Walker, The National Front, Glasgow: Fontana, 1977, p.59
2.      Peter Barberis, John McHugh, Mike Tyldesley, Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations: Parties, Groups and Movements of the 20th Century, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2000, pp. 192-193
3.       Walker, The National Front, pp. 59-60
4.       Walker, The National Front, p. 60
5.       R. Hill & A. Bell, The Other Face of Terror - Inside Europe’s Neo-Nazi Network, London: Collins, 1988, p. 29
6.       Hill & Bell, The Other Face of Terror, p. 30
7.       Hill & Bell, The Other Face of Terror, pp. 31-32
8.       Michael Billig, A Social Psychological View of the National Front, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978, p. 114
9.     Walker, The National Front, p. 63
10.      John Bean, Many Shades of Black - Inside Britain's Far Right, London: New Millennium, 1999, pp. 186-188
11.      Walker, The National Front, p. 64
12.      Walker, The National Front, p. 67
13.      Hill & Bell, The Other Face of Terror, p. 83
14.      S. Taylor, The National Front in English Politics, London: Macmillan, 1982, p. 18
15.      Donald Thomas, A Long Time Burning, Taylor & Francis, 1969, p. 311
16.      Susan Easton, The Problem of Pornography: Regulation and the Right to Free Speech, Routledge, 1994, p. 165
17.      Katharine Gelber, Speaking back: the free speech versus hate speech debate, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2002, pp. 104–105
18.      Ibrahim G. Aoudé, The ethnic studies story: politics and social movements in Hawaiʻi, University of Hawaii Press, 1999, pp. 109–110
19.      Hill & Bell, The Other Face of Terror, p. 116
20.      Richard L. Abel, Speaking Respect, Respecting Speech, University of Chicago Press, 1999, p. 200
21.      Walker, The National Front, pp. 191–192
 

[admin]

Roger Pearson (anthropologist)
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/26/20



Roger Pearson (born 21 August 1927 in London) is a British anthropologist, soldier, businessman, eugenics advocate, political organiser for the extreme right, and publisher of political and academic journals. He has been on the faculty of the Queens College, Charlotte, the University of Southern Mississippi, and Montana Tech, and is now retired. It has been noted that Pearson has been surprisingly successful in combining a career in academia with political activities on the far right.[1] He served in the British Army after World War II, and was a businessman in South Asia. In the late 1950s he founded the Northern League.

The Northern League was a neo-Nazi organisation founded by Roger Pearson. It was active in the United Kingdom and in northern continental Europe in the latter half of the 20th century.

Roger Pearson formed the Northern League in collaboration with Peter Huxley-Blythe, who was active in a variety of neo-Nazi groups with connections in Germany and North America. The League published the periodical The Northlander.

The stated purpose was to save the "Nordic race" from "annihilation of our kind" and to "fight for survival against forces which would mongrelize our race and civilization". The Northern League merged newsletters with Britons Publishing Company, an anti-Semitic publisher and a major distributor of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Leading members of the Northern League included the Nazi racial eugenicist Hans F. K. Günther, who continued his work in the post-war period under a pseudonym. Other active members included the founder of Mankind Quarterly, Robert Gayre, and its editors Robert E. Kuttner and Donald A. Swan; the American segregationist Earnest Sevier Cox, the ex–Waffen SS officer and post-war neo-Nazi leader Arthur Ehrhardt, and a number of post-war British fascists, though even among fascists, the Northern League was considered extremist. Among its co-founders and activists were Alastair Harper, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) parliamentary candidate in Dunfermline West in 2001.

Northern League literature was written in the style of scientific racism (e.g., the work of Pearson's collaborator Raymond B. Cattell) and its Statement of Aims reflects 19th century conceptions of Rasse and Volk. Andrew S. Winston of the University of Guelph writes in an analysis of this group:

"According to the 'Aims', Northern Europeans are the 'purest survival of the great Indo-European family of nations, sometimes described as the Caucasian race and at other times as the Aryan race'. Almost all the 'classic civilisations of the past were the product of these Indo-European peoples'. Intermarriage with conquered peoples was said to produce the decay of these civilizations, particularly through interbreeding with slaves. 'The rising tide of Color"' threatens to overwhelm European society, and would result in the 'biological annihilation of the subspecies', according to the Northern League."

-- Northern League (United Kingdom), by Wikipedia

In the 1960s he established himself in the United States for a while working together with Willis Carto publishing white supremacist and anti-Semitic literature.[2]

Willis Allison Carto (July 17, 1926 – October 26, 2015) was an American far right political activist. He described himself as Jeffersonian and populist, but was primarily known for his promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial.

Carto was known as a political racial theorist through the Liberty Lobby and successor organizations which he helped create. Carto ran a group supporting segregationist George Wallace's 1968 presidential campaign which formed the basis for the National Youth Alliance which promoted Francis Parker Yockey's political philosophy. Carto helped found the Populist Party, which served as an electoral vehicle for white supremacist group and Ku Klux Klan members, such as David Duke in the 1988 presidential election and Christian Identity supporter Bo Gritz in 1992. Carto ran the American Free Press newspaper which publishes anti-semitic and racist books and features columns by Joe Sobran, James Traficant, Paul Craig Roberts, and others. The organization promotes 9/11 conspiracy theories. Carto's many other projects included the Institute for Historical Review, which promotes Holocaust denial.

-- Willis Carto, by Wikipedia

Pearson's anthropological work is based in the eugenic belief that "favorable" genes can be identified and segregated from "unfavorable" ones. He advocates a belief in biological racialism, and claims that human races can be ranked.[3][4] Pearson argues that the future of the human species depends on political and scientific steps to replace the "genetic formulae" and populations that he considers to be inferior with ones he considers to be superior.[5][6][7][8]

Pearson also published two popular textbooks in anthropology, but his anthropological views on race have been widely rejected as unsupported by contemporary anthropology. In 1976 he found the Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, which has been identified as one of two international journals which regularly publishes articles pertaining to race and intelligence with the goal of supporting the idea that white people are inherently superior (the other such journal being Mankind Quarterly).[9] In 1978 he took over the editorship of Mankind Quarterly founded by Robert Gayre and Henry Garrett, widely considered a scientific racist journal. Most of Pearson's publishing ventures have been managed through the Institute for the Study of Man, and the Pioneer Fund, with which Pearson is closely associated, having received $568,000 in the period from 1981-1991.[10][11][12]

Pearson's opposition to egalitarianism extends to Marxism and socialism. In the 1980s, he was a political organizer for the American far-right; he established the Council for American Affairs and was the American representative in the World Anti-Communist League. As World Chairman of the WACL he worked with the U.S. government during the cold war, and he collaborated with many anti-communist groups in the organisation, including the Unification Church and former German Nazis.[13][14]

On his website, Pearson disputes specific accusations of race-hate, of anti-semitism, of arguing in favor of genocide, involuntary eugenics, forced repatriation of legal immigrants, subjugation or exploitation by one group of another, extreme or fascist politics—including National Socialism or any totalitarian system—as well as denying accusations of impropriety.[15]

Early life

Roger Pearson was born on 21 August 1927 in London.[16][17] He grew up in England during World War II and his only sibling, a Battle of Britain fighter pilot (238 Squadron), four of his cousins (three pilots/aircrew) and two school friends died in that war. Later, Pearson would frequently describe World War II as a senseless "fratricidal war", in which the mutual destruction of Germanic peoples contributed to the gradual downfall of the Nordic race.[18]

Pearson joined the British Army's Queen's Royal Regiment in April 1945 in England, and was commissioned in 1946 from the British Indian Army's Officers Training School Kakul, North-West Frontier Province (today the Pakistan Military Academy). He served with the British Indian Army in Meerut, (1946) before the Partition of India, with the British Indian Division in the Occupation of Japan, and with the British Army in Singapore (1948), before returning to university in England. Pearson later directed various British-controlled companies in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

From the University of London, he gained a master's degree in economics and sociology and a PhD in anthropology.[19]

Early political engagement

In 1958 he founded the Northern League for North European Friendship, an organisation promoting Pan-Germanism, Anti-semitism and Neo-Nazi racial ideology.[20][21][22] The Northern League published the journals "The Northlander" and "Northern World" which described its purpose as "to make Whites aware of their forgotten racial heritage, and cut through the Judaic fog of lies about our origin and the accomplishments of our race and our Western culture."[23] In 1959 in the Northlander, Pearson described the aim of the organization as preventing the "annihilation of our kind" and to lead Nordics in Europe and the Americas in the "fight for survival against forces which would mongrelize our race and civilization"[24] He also wrote of the need for "a totalitarian state, with conscious purpose and central control . . . to embark upon a thorough-going policy of genetic change for its population. . . . [T]here is surely little doubt that it could soon outstrip rival nations."[25] Under the pen name Edward Langford,[16] Pearson also wrote a series on "Authors of Human Science" with portraits of prominent racialists such as Arthur de Gobineau, Houston Stewart Chamberlain,[26] Arthur Keith,[27] Madison Grant[28] and Lothrop Stoddard.[29]

Pearson also corresponded with American segregationist Earnest Sevier Cox, a dedicated member of the League, who had lobbied for a federal funding to "Repatriate" African-Americans to Africa since the 1920s. Pearson assured him that "I am entirely with you on your efforts to obtain Federal aid to American Negroes who wish to return to Africa."[25]

From the beginning the League was criticized because of its open emphasis on the dysgenic and fratricidal nature of intra-European warfare, and its tendency to attract prominent ex-Nazis such as scholar Hans F. K. Günther, who received awards under the National Socialist regime for his work on race, and Heinrich Himmler's former assistant Franz Altheim, both of whom were members of the league in its early years. Other members of the league were British Neo-Nazi Colin Jordan, and John Tyndall.[30] Pearson resigned from the League in 1961, after which it became more politically oriented.[20]

It was Cox who suggested to Pearson that they should hold a meeting at Detmold, West Germany, near what was then believed to be the site where the Germanic tribes defeated the Romans in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. The first meeting of the League was indeed held there in 1959, with Cox and Hans F. K. Günther as keynote speakers, although Günther's participation, him being a prominent former Nazi, had to be kept low profile.[25] The event was described by locals as "National Socialism revived".[31]

On his website, Pearson states that the Northern League never advocated National Socialism or political totalitarianism, and that membership was open to anyone who wished to receive the league's publications.[15]

Anthropological views

Pearson's anthropological views drew on the theories of British anthropologist Sir Arthur Keith, who had argued that human races were distinct evolutionary units destined to compete for resources. Pearson's early writings directly cited Keith as a major influence even while recognizing that "many will see [Keith’s observations] as a defence of Hitlerite philosophy."[32] Pearson summarizes Keith's racial and evolutionary philosophy in the following manner: "If a nation with a more advanced, more specialised, or in any way superior set of genes mingles with, instead of exterminating, an inferior tribe, then it commits racial suicide, and destroys the work of thousands of years of biological isolation and natural selection."[33]

In his work, Pearson describes racial types as subspecies, which he defines as "a distinctive group of individuals which are on their way to becoming separate species, but which have not been isolated long enough, or had time to become sufficiently diversified to lose the power to inter-breed". He argues that mixing between subspecies is detrimental as one subspecies will always be better suited for life than the other, and will therefore tend to avoid miscegenation.[24][34][35][36][37]

In 1995 and 1996 Pearson published a trilogy of articles in Mankind Quarterly regarding the "Concept of heredity in Western thought", a defense of hereditarianism and a denouncement of the "onslaught of egalitarianism". Pearson here repeated his defense for the view of racial groups as subspecies and he repeated his dedication to eugenicist ideas, although with the caveat that negative eugenics ought to take place as a voluntary act of altruistic sacrifice for one's species.[38] The same views were repeated in the 1996 book Heredity and Humanity: Race, Eugenics and Modern Science.[39]

Business in South Asia

Pearson served as president of the Pakistan Tea Association, Chittagong, in 1963.[40] He also served on the managing committee of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry.[41] Pearson sold his business interests in East Pakistan in 1965 and moved to the United States. It was during his time in South Asia that he became interested in Aryanism, and the linguistic, cultural, and genetic connections between Northern Europe and the Indo-Aryan populations of the Subcontinent.[42]

Academic career in the US

Recently arrived in the United States, Pearson contributed to some of publications of anti-semite Willis Carto such as Western Destiny and to Noontide Press.[43] From 1966 to 1967 as "Stephan Langton", Pearson published The New Patriot, a magazine devoted to "a responsible but penetrating inquiry into every aspect of the Jewish Question."[44] As Lanton he published articles such as "Zionists and the Plot Against South Africa," "Early Jews and the Rise of Jewish Money Power" and "Swindlers of the Crematoria."[45] His books of this era, all published in 1966 in London by Clair Press, including Eugenics and Race, Blood groups and Race, Race & Civilisation and Early Civilizations of the Nordic Peoples were later distributed in the United States by The Thunderbolt Inc.,[46] an organ of the National States' Rights Party. Pearson's co-founder of The New Patriot was Senator Jack Tenney, who for sixteen years was Chairman of the California Senate Committee on Un-American Activities and who wrote frequently for that journal.[citation needed] Pearson joined the Eugenics Society in 1963 and became a fellow in 1977.

In 1978 he took over the editorship of the journal Mankind Quarterly, which had originally been founded in 1960 by Robert Gayre, Henry Garrett, Corrado Gini, Ottmar von Verschuer and Reginald Ruggles Gates.[47][48]

In 1973 Pearson also founded the academic Journal of Indo-European Studies.

In 1966 he toured the southern US and Caribbean, and in 1967 he visited South Africa, Rhodesia and Mozambique, before joining the faculty of the University of Southern Mississippi (USM) in 1968 as an Assistant Professor of Sociology. In 1970, he was appointed Associate Professor and head of Sociology and Anthropology at Queens College, Charlotte (now Queens University of Charlotte) but resigned to return to USM the next year as Professor and Chairman of a new Department of Anthropology, offering both bachelor's and master's degrees.[15]

In 1971 he was appointed chair of the department of Anthropology Comparative Religious Studies at the USM.[49] According to William Tucker's description, he fired most of the non-tenured faculty, hiring instead scholars such as Robert E. Kuttner and Donald A. Swan, both with similar political backgrounds to Pearson. The dean at USM later stated that Pearson had "used his post as an academic façade to bring in equal-minded fanatics."[50] Pearson himself states that this is untrue and that "It is true that two faculty members from the formerly separate Religion department, which had recently been merged with Pearson’s department to create a larger, combined department of Anthropology, Philosophy and Religion, were terminated, but this act was ordered by the Administration and not by the department Chair, Pearson."[15]

In 1974 Pearson was appointed Professor and Dean of Academic Affairs and Director of Research at Montana Tech.[51] During his tenure as dean, the school received $60,000 from the Pioneer Fund to support Pearson's academic research and publishing activities.[51] When a journalist called the various universities at which Pearson had held positions, Montana Tech officials stated they were unaware that Pearson was the person who had edited Western Destiny, a periodical laden with many pro-South Africa, anti-Communist and anti-racial mixing articles, who had penned both articles and pamphlets for Willis Carto's Noontide Press.[51] These race-oriented titles included: "Eugenics and Race" and "Early Civilizations of the Nordic Peoples."[51]

Pearson's work in publishing the work of "scholars who are supportive of a free enterprise economy, and a firm and consistent foreign policy and a strong national defense" was commended by President Ronald Reagan for his "substantial contribution to promoting and upholding those ideals and principles that we value at home and abroad."[20][52]

World Anti-Communist League

In 1975, Pearson left academia and moved to Washington, D.C., to become president of the Council on American Affairs, President of the American chapter of the World Anti-Communist League, Editor of the Journal on American Affairs (later renamed The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies), and eventually President of University Professors for Academic Order (UPAO), an organisation advocating academic integrity, social order and that the university should not be "an instrument of social change" and working to depoliticize campus environments. He was also a Trustee of the Benjamin Franklin University.

He also served on editorial board of the several institutions, including the Heritage Foundation, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the American Security Council, and that a number of conservative politicians wrote articles for Pearson's Journal on American Affairs and related Monographs, including Senators Jake Garn (R-UT), Carl T. Curtis (R-NE), Jesse Helms (R-NC), and Representatives Jack Kemp (R-NY), and Philip Crane (R-UT).[43]

Pearson was elected World Chairman of the World Anti-Communist League in 1978. According to William H. Tucker he "used this opportunity to fill the WACL with European Nazis – ex-officials of the Third Reich and Nazi collaborators from other countries during the war as well as new adherents to the cause—in what one journalist called 'one of the greatest fascist blocs in postwar Europe'."[53]

Pearson presided over the League's 11th Annual Conference held in Washington that year. The initial session of the five-day session, which was addressed by two U.S. Senators and opened by the United States Marine Corps Band and Joint Armed Services Honor Guard, was attended by several hundred members from around the world. After the meeting had been condemned in Pravda, The Washington Post published an even more critical attack on both WACL and Pearson's extreme right wing politics.[54][55]

Pearson resigned from the WACL in the wake of accusations that he "encouraged the membership of European and Latin American groups with Nazi or neo-Nazi ties".[56] In a Wall Street Journal article subsequent chairman John Singlaub was quoted calling Pearson an "embarrassment" who is "not at all welcome in any activity"[56] The same article claimed that Pearson's Presidential commendation had been achieved only through the mediation of an associate of Pearson's who worked in the Defense Department. The White House did not retract the letter, but made a public statement in which the Presidential secretary affirmed the Presidents' repudiation of any sort of racial discrimination. Pearson was requested to stop using the letter from Reagan in public promotion of his activities.[56] One member of the WACL, conservative politician Geoffrey Stewart-Smith described the organization during its period under Pearson as "largely a collection of Nazis, Fascists, anti-Semites, sellers of forgeries, vicious racialists, and corrupt self-seekers."[57]

After the Washington Post article, Pearson was asked to resign from the editorial board of the neo-Conservative Heritage Foundation's journal Policy Review, which he had helped to found, but his connection with other organisations continued, and in 1986 CovertAction Quarterly uncovered his association with James Jesus Angleton, former chief of CIA Counter-Intelligence, General Daniel O. Graham, former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, General Robert C. Richardson, and other American Security Council members.[58]

Association with the Pioneer Fund

In 1981, Pearson received the library of Donald A. Swan through a grant from the Pioneer Fund.[59] Between 1973 and 1999 the Fund spent $1.2 million on Pearson's activities, most of which was used for the Institute for the Study of Man[60] which Pearson directed and which under Pearson acquired the peer-reviewed journal Mankind Quarterly in 1979. Pearson took over as publisher and is said to have editorial influence, although his name has never appeared on the masthead. Pearson has used diverse pseudonyms to contribute to the journal, including "J. W. Jamieson" and "Alan McGregor", sometimes even using one pseudonym to review and praise the work of another.[61] This publication was later taken over by The Council for Social and Economic Studies.

Pearson is also director of the Council for Social and Economics Studies, which owns the Scott-Townsend Publishers imprint (which has published most of his recent books), and General Editor of the Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies.

Publications

• Eastern Interlude. Thacker Spink, Calcutta; Luzac and Co., London, 1953.
• Eugenics and Race. Clair Press, London, 1958; 2nd ed. 1966, Clair Press, London and Noontide Press, Los Angeles OCLC 9737954
• Blood groups and race. (1st edition unknown) 2nd ed. 1966, Clair Press, London, and Noontide Press, Los Angeles OCLC 6099970
• Race & civilisation. (1st edition unknown) 2nd ed. 1966, Clair Press, London, and Noontide Press, Los Angeles OCLC 4387181
• Early Civilizations of the Nordic Peoples. Northern World, London, 1958. Noontide Press, Los Angeles, 1965 OCLC 9972221
• Introduction to Anthropology: an ecological/evolutionary approach. Holt Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1974.
• Sino-Soviet Intervention in Africa. Council on American Affairs, 1977.
• Korea in the World Today. Council on American Affairs, Washington, D.C., 1978.
• Ecology and Evolution. Mankind Quarterly Monograph, Washington, D.C., 1981.
• Essays in Medical Anthropology, Scott-Townsend Publishers, Washington, D.C., 1981.
• Anthropological Glossary. Krieger Publishing Co., Malabar, Fl. 1985.
• Evolution, Creative Intelligence, and Intergroup Competition. Cliveden Press, 1986
• William Shockley: Shockley on Eugenics and Race: The Application of Science to the Solution of Human Problems. Preface by Arthur Jensen. Scott-Townsend Publishers, Washington, D.C., 1992. OCLC 26400159
• Race, Intelligence and Bias in Academe. Introduction by Hans Eysenck.[46] Scott-Townsend Publishers, Washington, D.C., 1991 OCLC 25308868 (2nd. Ed. 1994).
• Heredity and Humanity: Race, Eugenics and Modern Science, 1996. Scott-Townsend Publishers, Washington, D.C., 1991 (2nd edition 1998).

References

1. "Pearson has succeeded in combining such right-wing politics with a conventional academic career." – Kühl, Stefan (2001). The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. Oxford University Press, p. 4.
2. Winston, A. S. (1996). The context of correctness: A comment on Rushton. Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, 5(2), 231-250.
3. "Evolution cannot occur unless 'favorable' genes are segregated out from amongst 'unfavorable" genetic formulae' [...] any population that adopts a perverted or dysgenic form of altruism – one which encourages a breeding community to breed disproportionately those of its members who are genetically handicapped rather than from those who are genetically favored, or which aids rival breeding populations to expand while restricting its own birthrate – is unlikely to survive into the definite future." – Pearson, Roger (1995b). "The Concept of Heredity in Western Thought: Part Three, the Revival of Interest in Genetics," The Mankind Quarterly, 36, pp. 96, 98."
4. Pearson, Roger (1966). Eugenics and Race. London: Clair Press, p. 33.
5. Kohn, M. (1995). The race gallery: The return of racial science. London: Jonathan Cape. pp. 52-54
6. Tucker, W. H. (2002). Closer Look at the Pioneer Fund: Response to Rushton, A. Alb. L. Rev., 66, 1145.
7. Tucker, W. H. (2003). The Leading Academic Racists of the Twentieth Century. Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 90-95.
8. Shared Eugenic Visions: Raymond B. Cattell and Roger Pearson. Andrew S. Winston, University of Guelph "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 18 August 2015. Retrieved 25 June 2015.
9. Stavenhagen, Rodolfo (14 December 2012). Pioneer on Indigenous Rights. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 90. ISBN 9783642341502.
10. "ROGER PEARSON" ISAR
11. Rosenthal, S. J. (1995). The Pioneer Fund Financier of Fascist Research. American Behavioral Scientist, 39(1), 44-61.
12. Winston, A. S. (1998). Science in the service of the far right: Henry E. Garrett, the IAAEE, and the Liberty Lobby. Journal of Social Issues, 54(1), 179-210.
13. Kuhl, S. (1994). The Nazi connection: eugenics, American racism, and German national socialism. Oxford University Press.
14. Jackson, J. P. (2006). Argumentum ad hominem in the science of race. Argumentation and Advocacy, 43(1), 14.
15. Pearson, Roger. "Derogations, Conspiracy Theories and General Inaccuracies". Retrieved 27 November 2014.
16. "ISAR - In the Circuit Court". http://www.ferris-pages.org. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
17. http://www.professor-roger-pearson.com/
18. Tucker 2002:160
19. Paul W. Valentine (28 May 1978). "The Fascist Specter Behind The World Anti-Red League". The Washington Post.
20. Russ Bellant (1991). Old Nazis, the new right, and the Republican Party (3rd ed.). Boston: South End Press. OCLC 716423118.
21. Steven J. Rosenthal (September 1995). "The Pioneer Fund: Financier of Fascist Research". American Behavioral Scientist. 39 (1): 44–61. doi:10.1177/0002764295039001006.
22. http://www.psychology.uoguelph.ca/facul ... shton.html
23. Lincoln, Bruce (1999). Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship. University of Chicago Press, p. 122.
24. A. S. Winston. (1996). The context of correctness: A comment on Rushton. Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, 5, 231—250. "Pearson was clear about the problem of contact between races: ". . . evolutionary progress can only take place properly amongst small non-cross-breeding groups. Always, a cross between two types meant the annihilation of the better type, for although the lower sub-species would be improved by such a cross, the more advanced would be retarded, and would then have a weaker chance in the harsh and entirely amoral competition for survival." (1959a, pp. 9-10)[1]
25. Jackson, John P. (2005). Science for Segregation: Race, Law, and the Case against Brown v. Board of Education. NYU Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-4271-6. pp.43–144
26. Langford, Edward, 1958. Northlander vol 1 no 3
27. Langford, Edward, 1958. Northlander vol 1 no 5
28. Langford, Edward, 1958. Northlander vol 1 no 6
29. Langford, Edward, 1958. Northlander vol 1 no 7
30. Tucker 2002:161-3
31. Anderson, Scott, & Anderson, Jon Lee (1986). Inside the League: the Shocking Exposé of how Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads have infiltrated the world Anti-Communist League. New York: Dodd, Mead, p. 94.
32. Pearson, Roger. 1957. "Sir Arthur Keith and Evolution." Northern World 2, no. 1 (1957): 4– 7. cited in Jackson, J. P. (2005). Science for segregation: Race, law, and the case against Brown v. Board of Education. New York: New York University Press. p 46
33. Pearson, Roger. 1966 [1959]. Eugenics and Race. p. 26
34. Pearson, R. 1966 [1959]. Blood groups and race. London: Clair Press.
35. Pearson, R. (1959). Eugenics and race London: Clair Press.
36. Pearson "Eugenics and Race" "There is no way of eliminating undesirable genetic qualities except by annihilating the 'line,' that is by preventing the individual who carries the unfortunate genes from reproducing at all. If one does not wish to go so far as that then one must at least prevent cross-breeding between 'healthy and unhealthy stock, for once the entire stock is contaminated there is no solution other than the annihilation of the entire species." p. 27
37. Pearson, 1966 [1959] "Eugenics and Race" pp. 40-41 "To think and practice eugenic and racial morals ourself is our duty, but this is not enough in the troubled state of the world today. It is necessary for each and every one of us to work to bring these ideas home to our fellow beings. We must talk and write about eugenics and race; we must help to make the ideas "fashionable" as quickly as we can. Let there be no confusion, also, between the two concepts for basically they are one and the same. A race is a group of individuals who possess a similar genetic heritage, and who when crossed are capable of breeding true. A race is consequently pure or impure according to its ability to breed true, and to produce its own kind. Biological accidents do occur, and these may result in the defects which eugenics seeks to remove from the mainstream (not necessarily by inhumane means), but differences in emotive, intellectual and physical constitution, where not acquired, are largely racial, the product of the importation of a different pattern of genes. ... We can only prevent the destruction of this edifice if we take it upon ourselves to overcome our• inherent shyness of such topics, to forget that we might possibly say something that might offend our neighbours, and start talking about race, racial hygiene and human eugenics. Only thus can we ensure that our children and-their children-will be able to find fitting partners for marriage. Only thus can we ensure the survival of our own kind and our own species and also lay the foundations for a noble future. Human stock-breeding is surely not a bad thing when exercised voluntarily and intelligently, and when its aim is to preserve an aristocracy of mankind."
38. Pearson, R. (1995). The concept of heredity in Western thought. III: The revival of interest in genetics. Mankind quarterly, 36(1), 73-103. "Once science can determine which individuals and populations have disproportionately high gene frequencies for advantageous traits, and which are handicapped by deleterious genetic qualities, societies which are prompted by a higher altruism dedicated to the wellbeing of future generations, rather to the sole gratification of the selfish needs of those who are currently living, will be able to effectively select eugenic over dysgenic reproduction. If true altruism prevails, the result will be eugenic decisions, made voluntarily and without coercion." "Any species that adopts patterns of behavior that run counter to the forces that govern the universe is doomed to suffer a painful, harshly enforced and totally involuntary eugenic process of evolutionary reselection and readaptation - or an even more severe penalty, extinction."
39. Timson, John. 1998. Review: Heredity and Humanity: Race, Eugenics and Modern Science. [2]Archived 24 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine
40. "Pakistan Tea Association chairman's Speech." Eastern Examiner, Dacca, 30 April 1963.
41. Pakistan Tea Association Annual Report
42. Zeskind, Leonard (2009). Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream. Macmillan, p. 12.
43. Michael, George (2008). Willis Carto and the American Far Right. University Press of Florida.
44. Heidi Beirich (2008), "Of Race and Rockets", Intelligence Report, Southern Poverty Law Center (130)
45. http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/i ... oneer-fund
46. Bruce Lincoln (2000). Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship. University of Chicago Press. p. 259. ISBN 978-0-226-48202-6.
47. Schaffer, Gavin "‘Scientific’ Racism Again?":1 Reginald Gates, the Mankind Quarterly and the Question of "Race" in Science after the Second World War Journal of American Studies (2007), 41: 253-278 Cambridge University Press
48. Jackson, John P. (2005). Science for Segregation: Race, Law, and the Case against Brown v. Board of Education. NYU Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-4271-6. Lay summary (30 August 2010).
49. Macklin, Graham (2012). "Transatlantic Connections and Conspiracies: A.K. Chesterton and The New Unhappy Lords". Journal of Contemporary History. 47 (2): 270–290. doi:10.1177/0022009411431723. ISSN 0022-0094.
50. Tucker 2002:166-67
51. Lichtenstein, Grace (11 December 1977). "Fund Backs Controversial Study of 'Racial Betterment'". New York Times.
52. Zeskind (2009), p. 12-13.
53. Tucker, William H. (Reissue 1996). The Science and Politics of Racial Research. University of Illinois Press. p. 257. ISBN 978-0252065606. Check date values in: |year= (help)
54. Paul W. Valentine, "The Fascist Specter Behind The World Anti-Red League". The Washington Post. 28 May 1978
55. Tim Kelsey; Trevor Rowe (4 March 1990). "Academics were funded by racist American trust". The Independent.
56. Rich Jaroslovsky (28 September 1984). Politics '84 -- Controversial Publisher: Racial Purist Uses Reagan Plug. Wall Street Journal (Eastern Edition), p. 1. Retrieved 6 November 2007, from ABI/INFORM Global database. (Document ID: 27121258).[3]
57. McManus, Doyle (16 September 1985). "Rightist Crusade Finds Its Way Into Spotlight: Led by Retired Gen. Singlaub, Anti-Communist League Is Funnel for Private Funds to Contras" (fee required). Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 8 October 2008.
58. "The Checkered Careers of James Angleton and Roger Pearson", Covert Action, No. 25 (Winter 1986)
59. Miller, Adam (Winter 1994–1995). "The Pioneer Fund: Bankrolling the Professors of Hate". The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (6): 58–61, 60–61. JSTOR 2962466. OCLC 486658694.
60. Tucker, William H. (2002). The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund. University of Illinois Press. p. 170. ISBN 978-0252027628.
61. Tucker, William H. (2007). The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-07463-9. Lay summary (4 September 2010).
• Russ Bellant, The Coors Connection (South End Press, 1989), p. 2; John Saloma, Ominous Politics (NY: Hill & Wang, 1984), p. 8.
• Bellant, Russ (1991). Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party. Boston: South End Press.
• Harris, Geoffrey (1994). The Dark Side of Europe: The Extreme Right Today. Edinburgh University Press.

External links

• Pearson's personal website with additional biographic information and photos
• Works by Roger Pearson, at Unz.org
• Mankind Quarterly
• Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies
• Shared Eugenic Visions: Raymond B. Cattell and Roger Pearson

[admin]

Phillip V. Tobias
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/26/20

In addition to Asia and the intelligence community, another disturbing connection between these early monster hunts manifested in the way of a possible shared ideology. One other scientist Coon corresponded with over the Yeti was Italian statistician and demographer Corrado Gini (1884-1965). A prominent fascist theorist in the 1920s and 1930s, and close to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Gini shared an interest in anomalous primates with Coon and his cohorts.72 An arch eugenicist Gini believed that nations, like individual people, went through periods of birth, youth, growth, old age then decline, and that strong nations need not apologize for their forceful expansion.73 He also thought, like [Carleton] Coon, that the Snowman might shed light on human evolution and sociological structure. In the late 1930s Gini founded a society that studied genetics and eugenics -- its journal was Genius, where in later years Ivan Sanderson and George Agogino published articles. In 2004 Russian anomalous primate researcher Dmitri Bayonov said that in 1962 Gini founded the Comite International pour l'Etudes Humanoides Velus. [International Committee for Hairy Humanoid Studies] Members of this committee included William Charles Osman-Hill, Bernard Heuvelmans, John Napier, and Phillip V. Tobias as well as John Green and Rene Dahinden.74 While Coon certainly had politically incorrect ideas about race, the others had no overt fascist sympathies. They may simply have welcomed any help from the international community that supported their work -- they embraced scientists from the Soviet bloc as well.

-- Chapter 9: A Yeti-Hunting 007, from "True Stories of Real-Life Monsters" [Excerpt], by Nick Redfern

Pearson also published two popular textbooks in anthropology, but his anthropological views on race have been widely rejected as unsupported by contemporary anthropology. In 1976 he found the Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, which has been identified as one of two international journals which regularly publishes articles pertaining to race and intelligence with the goal of supporting the idea that white people are inherently superior (the other such journal being Mankind Quarterly). In 1978 he took over the editorship of Mankind Quarterly founded by Robert Gayre and Henry Garrett, widely considered a scientific racist journal. Most of Pearson's publishing ventures have been managed through the Institute for the Study of Man, and the Pioneer Fund, with which Pearson is closely associated, having received $568,000 in the period from 1981-1991.

-- Roger Pearson (anthropologist), by Wikipedia

Institute for The Study of Man In Africa (ISMA)

Description: The Institute for the Study of Man in Africa (ISMA) was formally established in 1956 by Professor Phillip V. Tobias to perpetuate and foster the pioneering work on Man in Africa initiated by Professor Raymond Dart whose achievements in research on Man in Africa were monumental. From its inception the Institute attracted worldwide interest and academic support. Its appeal arose from its commitment to society in general and the fuller understanding of the conditions of Man in Africa, in health or disease.

Website: Institute for the Study of Man in Africa

Contact details

Physical address: Room 2B17, University of the Witwatersrand Medical School, York Rd., Parktown, Johannesburg, Gauteng

Telephone: (011)6472203

-- Institute for The Study of Man in Africa (ISMA), by Association Finder

Phillip V. Tobias is Professor and Head of the Department of Anatomy at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and President of the Institute for the Study of Man in Africa. He has been engaged in researches on the Kalahari Bushmen and other peoples of Subsaharan Africa since 1951, and the study of fossil man has engaged his attention in recent years. He has published many works on the past and present inhabitants of Africa and is the author of Chromosomes, Sex-Cells, and Evolution; Man’s Anatomy (with M. Arnold); and Olduvai Gorge, 1951-1961. He is editing a large work that will be entitled Studies on the Biology of the Bushmen.

-- Bushman Hunter-Gatherers: A Study in Human Ecology, by Phillip V. Tobias, 1964. Reprinted from D.H.S. Davis (Ed.), Ecological Studies in Southern Africa (Mongraphiae Biologicae, Vol. XIV) (The Hauge: W. Junk, 1964).

-- R.A. [Raymond A.] Dart, “Associations With and Impressions of Sir Grafton Elliot Smith,” Mankind 8 (1972), 171-75.

-- The Enigma of Raymond Dart, by Robin Denicourt

Dart, Taung, and the "missing link": An essay on the life and work of Emeritus Professor Raymond Dart, based on a tribute to Professor Dart on His 90th Birthday, Delivered at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, on 22 June 1983
Institute for the Study of Man in Africa. Paperback – January 1, 1984
by Phillip V Tobias (Author)

Phillip Vallentine Tobias
Born: 14 October 1925, Durban, Natal, South Africa
Died: 7 June 2012 (aged 86), Johannesburg, South Africa
Nationality: South African
Alma mater: University of Witwatersrand
Known for: Paleoanthropological and evolutionary work
Awards: Fellow of the Royal Society
Scientific career
Fields: Anthropology
Thesis: Chromosomes, Sex Cells, and Evolution in the Gerbil (1953)
Influenced: Patricia Vinnicombe

Phillip Vallentine Tobias FRS (14 October 1925 – 7 June 2012)[1] was a South African palaeoanthropologist and Professor Emeritus at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He was best known for his work at South Africa's hominid fossil sites.[2] He was also an activist for the eradication of apartheid and gave numerous anti-apartheid speeches at protest rallies and also to academic audiences.[3]

Academic life

Born in Durban, Natal on 14 October 1925, the only son and second child of Joseph Newman Tobias and his wife, Fanny (née Rosendorff), Phillip received his first schooling in Bloemfontein at St Andrew's School and in Durban at the Durban High School. In 1945, he started his career as demonstrator in histology and instructor in physiology at the University of Witwatersrand. He received his Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Histology and Physiology in 1946–1947. In 1948 he was elected the first President of the National Union of South African Students. He graduated in Medicine, Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery in 1950. He was appointed as a lecturer in anatomy in 1951. In 1953, he received his Doctor of Philosophy for a thesis entitled Chromosomes, Sex-Cells, and Evolution in the Gerbil.

In 1955, Tobias started his post-graduate research at the University of Cambridge, England, where he filled the position of Nuffield Dominion Senior Traveling Fellow in physical anthropology. The following year, at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and the University of Chicago, he was the Rockefeller Traveling Fellow in anthropology, human genetics, and dental anatomy and growth. In 1959, he became Professor and Head of the Department of Anatomy and Human Biology, succeeding his mentor and eminent scholar, Professor Raymond Dart. In 1967, he was awarded a Doctor of Science in palaeoanthropology for his work on hominid evolution. During this period he attended the University of the Witwatersrand. He was Dean of Medicine from 1980 to 1982. He was appointed Honorary Professor of Palaeoanthropology at the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research in 1977 and Honorary Professor in Zoology in 1981.[citation needed] Also in 1981, Tobias became a founding member of the World Cultural Council.[4]

Tobias excavated at the Sterkfontein caves and worked at almost all other major sites in Southern Africa after 1945. He also opened some 25 archaeological sites in Botswana during the French Panhard-Capricorn Expedition while conducting a biological survey of the Tonga People of Zimbabwe. He was one of the anthropologists instrumental in unmasking the Piltdown fraud.[5]

Research

His research has been mainly in the fields of paleoanthropology and the human biology of Africa's various populations. He has studied the Kalahari San, the Tonga people of Zambia and Zimbabwe, and numerous peoples of Southern Africa. Tobias is best known for his research on hominid fossils and human evolution, having studied and described hominid fossils from Indonesia, Israel, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Zambia. His best known work was on the hominids of East Africa, particularly those of the Olduvai Gorge. Collaborating with Louis Leakey, Tobias identified, described and named the new species Homo habilis. Cambridge University Press published two volumes on the fossils of Homo habilis from the Olduvai Gorge. He is closely linked with the archaeological excavation at the Sterkfontein site, a research programme he initiated in 1966. The Sterkfontein caves, which were already well known by his predecessor, Professor Raymond Dart, were used as a vehicle for introducing the second year anatomy students to anthropology and have seen the most sustained excavation of a single site in the world. This site has yielded the largest single sample of Australopithecus africanus as well as the first known example of Homo habilis from Southern Africa. It is now a World Heritage Site.[6]

He published in 1970 an article in which he questioned the link between brain-size, race and intelligence.[7]

Achievements and awards


Bust of Tobias at the Sterkfontein caves

Tobias is one of South Africa's most honoured and decorated scientists, and a world leading expert on human prehistoric ancestors; he has been nominated three times for a Nobel Prize, received a dozen honorary doctorates and been awarded South Africa's Order for Meritorious Service. Tobias published over 600 journal articles and authored or co-authored 33 books and edited or co-edited eight others. He has received honorary degrees from seventeen universities and other academic institutions in South Africa, the United States of America, Canada and Europe. He has been elected as a fellow, associate or honorary member of over 28 learned societies. These include being elected a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (1996).[8]

Among the medals, awards and prizes he has received are the Balzan Prize for Physical Anthropology (1987) and the Charles R. Darwin Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (1997). The Royal Society of South Africa is very sparing with its honours, and Tobias is one of only two South African Honorary Fellows of the Society and one of very few recipients of its senior medal, the John Herschel Medal.[9]

He held the positions of Professor Emeritus of Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Honorary Professor of Palaeo-anthropology, Honorary Professorial Research Associate and Director of the Sterkfontein Research Unit, and Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York USA. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Cambridge University and other institutions.[10]

Books

• Humanity from Naissance to Coming Millennia – This book covers important recent advances in human biology and human evolutionary studies. The contributions cover a wide range of topics, from Human Biology, Human Evolution (Emerging Homo, Evolving Homo, Early Modern Humans), Dating, Taxonomy and Systematics, to Diet and Brain Evolution.
• Into the Past – In this autobiographical work Tobias recounts the first 40 years of his life through anecdotes, experiences and philosophies.
• Images of Humanity: Selected Writings of Phillip V. Tobias Hardcover – December 31, 1991; ISBN 978-1874800231 - This is a valuable collection of the writings of an acclaimed academic who made important contributions to the sciences and humanities. Always wary of intense specialization, Tobias over the years fostered an interest in the human, social, anthropological and historical sciences. His early studies were in medicine, his PhD was awarded for his thesis.

Notes

1. White, T. D. (2012). "Phillip V. Tobias (1925-2012)". Science. 337 (6093): 423. Bibcode:2012Sci...337..423W. doi:10.1126/science.1225988. PMID 22837516.
2. Wood, Bernard (2012). "Phillip Vallentine Tobias (1925–2012)". Nature. 487 (7405): 571–572. Bibcode:2012Natur.487...40W. doi:10.1038/487040a. PMC 3666235. PMID 23594211.
3. Denise Grady (11 June 2012). "Phillip V. Tobias, Paleoanthropologist Who Analyzed Apelike Fossils, Is Dead at 86". The New York Times.
4. "About Us". World Cultural Council. Retrieved 8 November 2016.
5. Tobias, Phillip V.; Bowler, Peter J.; et al. (1992). "Piltdown: An Appraisal of the Case against Sir Arthur Keith [and Comments and Reply]". Current Anthropology. 33 (3): 243–293. doi:10.1086/204069. ISSN 0011-3204.
6. "Phillip Tobias". Retrieved 9 June 2012.
7. Tobias, P. V. (1970). "Brain-size, grey matter and race —fact or fiction?". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 32 (1): 3–25. doi:10.1002/ajpa.1330320103. PMID 5415587.
8. "DServe Archive Persons Show". royalsociety.org. Retrieved 14 November 2017.
9. Royal Society of South Africa Medal Winners
10. University of Witwatersrand Obituary Archived 25 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine
11. "Scientist Phillip Tobias dies". News24. 7 June 2012. Retrieved 7 June 2012.
12. "Eminent South African anthropologist Tobias dies". Retrieved 8 June 2012.

References

• Tribute to Phillip Valentine Tobias by the Royal Society Of South Africa on the Occasion of his 80th Birthday at the Wayback Machine (archived 2006-09-24)
• Minnesota State University at the Wayback Machine (archived 2007-06-09)
• Goodrum, Matthew R. (2013). "Obituary: Phillip Vallentine Tobias (1925-2012)". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 150 (2): 167–169. doi:10.1002/ajpa.22182. ISSN 0002-9483. PMID 23180609.

************************

Phillip V. Tobias and the 'Bushman Hunter-Gatherers' (1964)
by Jane Carruthers
Royal Society of South Africa
Accessed: 6/26/20

The first book to be published explicitly entitled Ecological Studies in Southern Africa appeared in 1964, edited by D.H.S. Davis of the Medical Ecology Centre in the Department of Health in Johannesburg. Today, a work called ‘Ecological studies’ would suggest content around ecology, ecological systems, trophic levels, resilience and other principles relating to the natural world. However, an earlier meaning and usage of the word had more to with environmental relationships – the place of animals and plants within particular habitats and their interrelationships, adjustments and accommodation thereto. ‘Ecological studies’ is never defined in Davis’s book, which ranges extremely widely. The work comprises 18 chapters – stretching through the Pleistocene environment and palaeoecology, human origins and fossil studies, vegetation and plant succession, invasive plants, freshwater and estuarine studies, ornithology, genetic studies of flies, gerbil fleas, climatic change, bilharzia, the history of game preservation and veld burning. In all, it is a fascinating miscellany with contributions of uneven focus and quality.

This short article analyses just one of these chapters in order to reflect on the changing discipline of San (Bushman) studies over the past 50 years. It also considers an aspect of the career of Professor Phillip V. Tobias (1925-2012), one of South Africa’s most renowned scientists and a former President of the Royal Society of South Africa.

In 1964, then aged 39, Tobias was already Professor of Anatomy at the University of the Witwatersrand. His chapter in Davis was entitled ‘Bushman hunter-gatherers: A study in human ecology’ (Tobias 1964: 67-86). The content was largely based on Tobias’s experiences more than a decade earlier as a member of the 1952 French-sponsored Panhard-Capricorn Expedition led by explorer and geographer Francois Balsan. As Tobias explained in his 2005 memoir, Professor Raymond Dart, then head of the Department of Anatomy at Wits, encouraged Tobias’s participation in what was to be his first long (11 weeks, 6 800 km) expedition. Despite his frequent attacks of asthma, Tobias found the experience of travelling along the Tropic of Capricorn from Namibia to Mozambique through the Kalahari exhilarating, and he credits it with his lasting enchantment of Africa (Tobias 2005: 63-69).


Bushman sucking water through a straw and filling an ostrich egg shell

Tobias’s secondment to Balsan’s expedition was specifically in order to study and measure (anthropometry) the Bushmen (Tobias 1964: 86). San studies today focus largely on their spiritual life, their rock art and belief systems. In this regard, the many publications of Professor David Lewis-Williams FRSSAf , originating in the re-discovery and reinterpretation of the material collected in Cape Town by Wilhelm Bleek and his family in the late 1800s, have deepened our understanding immeasurably. The people that Tobias called ‘Bushmen’ in his chapter in Davis are more frequently today referred to as the ‘San’ so as to avoid the derogatory term that ‘Bushman’ was considered to be, but in fact, ‘San’ may also be pejorative and many San prefer to be called ‘Bushmen’ instead. (In this essay, the terms are used interchangeably.)

In the Davis volume there are two chapters on the San, one is by Tobias and the other by Robert Story, then employed in the Division of Botany in the Department of Agriculture in Pretoria and later at the C.S.I.R.O. in Canberra (Story 1964: 87-99). Story describes the ‘Plant lore of the Bushmen’. Story was extremely knowledgeable about San use of plant material, but not – as Tobias came to be – of their anatomy, their biology and their physical and cultural adaptation to desert life.

Reading ‘Bushmen hunter-gatherers’ today one cannot but be struck by the racial tone of Tobias’s chapter – the indignity of physical anthropology, of measuring people, of considering issues such as morphology, height (dwarfing), the amount of body-fat, genital and infantile features and the like. In his memoir, Tobias acknowledged how his scientific thinking changed over the years and how, at the time of the Balsan expedition (and thus the chapter in Davis), he was ‘under the influence of Raymond Dart’s typological approach to the analysis of the “racial affinities” of African peoples’. While this approach forms the basis of the chapter in Davis, Tobias said that he soon shook off Dart’s influence because ‘it went hand in hand with stereotyping and forms the basis of what the Germans used to call Rassenkunde. Surely such thinking was to be eschewed in an age when we were learning so much more about how the hereditary material worked ….’ (Tobias 2005: 68).

The arrangement of the chapters in the Davis volume is suggestive of the state of scientific thinking at that time and the place of ‘prehistoric people’ in it – as part of the natural rather than the truly human world. The book begins with a chapter on the Pleistocene environment and it is followed by pollen analysis and palaeoecological studies of that era Chapter 3 is concerned with ‘The Pleistocene mammals of southern Africa’. Humanity enters ‘ecological studies’ with Raymond Dart’s exposition on the South African ‘man-apes’ and the chapters by Tobias and Story on the Bushmen follow. There are no other chapters on humans.

Following the theoretical thinking of Marston Bates (1953), Tobias argued that biology and culture were difficult to separate. After describing Bushmen morphology, Tobias pondered the numbers of the surviving San, a task made difficult because of their nomadism and inaccessibility. Definition itself was problematic: What is a Bushman? Are they to be categorised according to their hunting and gathering economy? Their characteristic ‘click languages’? Their physical appearance? Following Schapera, and for the purposes of his discussion, Tobias decided upon language and a mutual recognition of each other. Far from being a ‘vanishing race’ in the region (as many thought), he estimated a population total of 55 531, of whom only 20 lived within the Republic of South Africa. Early European settler massacres of San in South Africa were responsible for their almost complete extermination together with a particularly virulent smallpox epidemic of 1951. By far the majority of San (more than 50 000) were citizens of South West Africa (now Namibia) and the Bechuanaland Protectorate (now Botswana).


The huntsman’s eyes survey a parched horizon. Note how his skin has characteristically lost its elasticity

In accordance with the now abundant confirmation from studies by Lewis-Williams and others, Tobias discussed the earlier widespread distribution of Bushmen in southern Africa, but also included speculation that their being forced into arid environments favoured those with physical attributes and strengths that enabled them to survive under harsh circumstances. Genetic adaptation is a long-term process and thus, according to Tobias, probably did not play a large part in the ability of Bushmen to live in the desert, but their ease of acclimatization did. Better physically able than other communities to withstand extreme heat and cold, Bushmen – as explained by Tobias – were also culturally more flexible. The construction of windbreaks and sleeping quarters partially scooped out as protection from wind, the use of fire, an ethic of sharing, all played their part in survival. Perhaps even more important, however, was the organisation of the community into a variable number, small when food was scarce, large when food was available. Population growth might have been curtailed by infanticide or by abandoning the aged or infirm thus allowing a viable clan or band to persist. The relevance of a gender division and reliance on ‘veldkos’ and water storage were also explained by Tobias as survival techniques. Most significantly, however, he concluded that despite these enduring characteristics of a precolonial lifestyle, the San are modern humans and they are neither static or unchanging – as many apartheid politicians deemed, or wished, them to be. As all humans do, they maximise opportunities that they either make or with which they are presented. Southern African researchers in the 1950s and 1960s were thus, according to Tobias, privileged to be ‘provided with a unique opportunity of studying the dynamics of the transition from the Palaeolithic existence to pastoral life, such as was taking place in the river basins of the eastern Mediterranean thousands of years ago’ (Tobias 1964: 85).

Suggested reading:

Balsan, F. and Marion P., L’Expédition Panhard-Capricorne. Translated by Pamela Search. An account of an expedition across Africa from the Atlantic Coast to the Indian Ocean. (London, 1954).
Hollmann, J.C. ed., Customs and Beliefs of the /Xam Bushmen. (Johannesburg, n.d.)
Lewis-Williams, J.D., The Rock Art of Southern Africa. (Cambridge, 1983).
Deacon, J. and Dowson, T. eds, Voices from the Past: /Xam Bushmen and the Bleek and Lloyd Collection. (Johannesburg, 1996).
Story, R. ‘Plant lore of the Bushmen’, in Davis, D.H.S., ed., Ecological Studies in Southern Africa (The Hague, 1964), pp. 87-99.
Skotnes, P., ed., Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of the Bushmen (Cape Town, 1996).
Tobias, Phillip, Into the Past: A Memoir. (Johannesburg, 2005).
Tobias, P.V., ‘Bushman hunter-gatherers: A study in human ecology’, in Davis, D.H.S., ed., Ecological Studies in Southern Africa (The Hague, 1964), pp. 67-86.

************************

Study signals enduring racism in science
by Christa Kuljian
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
14 May 2019

Each university and journal must reflect on its assumptions in biology, medicine, natural sciences, anthropology and the social sciences.

In 1937, the zoology department at Stellenbosch University enlisted 133 men for a study. At the time, the field of physical anthropology was focused on documenting “racial types” and this study helped to scientifically construct and confirm the category “coloured” to distinguish these men from “white Afrikaners”.

Handri Walters wrote her PhD thesis on race, science and politics at Stellenbosch in 2018. She unearthed the data sheets from the 1937 study, which measured skin colour, eye colour, hair texture and more than 80 other measurements of the head and body to determine racial type.

In March 2019, researchers from the department of sports science at Stellenbosch published an article titled Age- and Education-Related Effects on Cognitive Functioning in Coloured South African Women. It concluded: “Coloured women in South Africa have increased risk for low cognitive functioning as they present with low education levels and unhealthy lifestyle behaviours.”

Eighty-two years after the 1937 study, Stellenbosch is still uncritically using the term “coloured” as a frame for research. The use of this colonial and apartheid category in a scientific study resulted in an outcry from academics and social media users alike.

“For scientists and research, it is really difficult,” said Elmarie Terblanche, one of the authors of the Stellenbosch article. Speaking in an interview on Cape Talk radio, Terblanche said: “We have to look at different racial groups, we have to specify. All population groups have different problems and we have to characterise that.”

A statement was put out by the Cape Flats Women’s Movement in response: “We are the demographic of your study. Life on the Cape Flats is brutal and the challenges we face are endless. We don’t think you can even begin to imagine what kind of mental ability this takes. How do you think our children look at us now that a famous university has declared their mothers to be idiots?”

A team of scholars decided to use their voices to speak out against bad science. The team — including Barbara Boswell and Shanel Johannes from the University of Cape Town, Zimitri Erasmus from Wits, Kopano Ratele from Unisa and Shaheed Mahomed of South African History Online — drafted a letter to the editors who published the article.

“We ask that you retract it [the article] because of its racist ideological underpinnings, flawed methodology and its reproduction of harmful stereotypes of ‘Coloured’ women.” The letter became part of a campaign that gained more than 10,000 signatures.

Many South African scholars have documented the history of racism and sexism in science in this country. Saul Dubow in his 1995 book, Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa, Yvette Abrahams in her articles including The great long national insult (1997), and Ciraj Rassool and Martin Legassick in their book Skeletons in the Cupboard (published in 2000 and updated in 2015) are among the important voices that have contributed to the understanding of this history.

The juxtaposition of the two Stellenbosch studies reminded me of my own shock when I began research for my book Darwin’s Hunch: Science, Race and the Search for Human Origins, published in 2016. Racism and sexism in science have deep roots and go back centuries.

In the mid-1700s, Carolus Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist, developed the modern system for classifying all living things and published Systema Naturae. He categorised humans as Homo sapiens. Yet, Linnaeus classified the Khoisan and “Hottentot” people of southern Africa in a separate category: Homo monstrosus that included “monstrous or abnormal” people. With this one act of naming and classifying, he sent a dehumanising, painful ripple-effect across the centuries.

Fourthly, the abandonment of the aged and infirm may have some survival value, if a band is on a forced march under conditions of hunger and scarcity. An old person unable to keep pace may be placed in a screen of bushes, provided with firewood and food and water, if available, and deliberately abandoned. If food is found soon, the old one may be rescued; if not, death follows and the hyaenas complete the next phase in the cycle of nature. Such a practice is known, too, among the Hottentots...

At a time of somewhat facile attribution of physical traits to geographical and ecological determinism, it is but a short step from the recognition that the stunted, steatopygous Bushman lives in the desert, to the claim that his peculiarities are the specialized or degenerate products of desert conditions.

The hypothesis that these curious morphological features are desert-determined has bedeviled the literature for decades and largely distracted attention from other aspects of the Bushman's ecology. Thus Hooton suggested that the steatopygia and its accompanying marked lumbar lordosis are an evolved means of overcoming drought. Marett proclaimed the Bushman as "the one form of man specialized for desert conditions" and, among many other reasons, held that steatopygia represented a peculiar capacity to economise water. He also tried to relate the Bushman's small stature to a postulated low activity of the anterior lobe of the pituitary, which, in turn, he related to the need to check diuresis. The yellow skin and epicanthic fold of the Bushman, Marett regarded not as a sign of Mongoloid admixture, but "as a primary character evolved in the desert cradle-land of this race," and the "peppercorn hair" as "an adaptation to withstand heat." Coon cited the Bushman as a human illustration of "Rensch's desert-fat rule," namely that fat in hot desert-dwellers "is deposited in lumps, where it will not interfere with body-heat loss or locomotion." Broom regarded the Bushmen as the degenerate descendants of an earlier prehistoric African race, though he did not directly attribute their degeneration to desert conditions.

-- Bushman Hunter-Gatherers: A Study in Human Ecology, by Phillip V. Tobias

From the eighteenth century onwards, the term hottentot was also a term of abuse without a specific ethnic sense, comparable to barbarian or cannibal. In its ethnic sense, it had developed connotations of savagery and primitivism soon already in the seventeenth century: colonial depictions of the Hottentots (Khoikhoi) in the seventeenth to eighteenth century were characterized by savagery, often suggestive of cannibalism or the consumption of raw flesh, physiological features such as steatopygia and elongated labia perceived as primitive or "simian"; and a perception of the click sounds in the Khoikhoi languages as "bestial". Thus it is possible to speak from the seventeenth century onwards of a European, colonial image of "the Hottentot" which bore little relation to any realities of the Khoisan in Africa, and which fed into the usage of hottentot as a generalised term of abuse. Correspondingly, the word is "sometimes used as ugly slang for a black person".

-- Hottentot (racial term), by Wikipedia

In the early 1900s, it was not unusual for scientists in Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States to believe humans could be categorised as distinct racial types and each type could be classified by its physical characteristics. Many scientists embraced the ideas of a racial hierarchy and white supremacy.

Raymond Dart, the head of the department of anatomy at Wits, was inspired by universities in the US and the UK to establish a human skeleton collection in an effort to clarify racial types. Dart also led the first expedition of researchers from Wits to the Kalahari Desert in 1936 because he was interested in the “Bushman anatomy”.

Thanks to a footnote in an important chapter of Deep histories: Gender and Colonialism in South Africa (2000) by Rassool and Patricia Hayes, I learnt of a young woman from the Kalahari named /Keri-/Keri. Dart, according to Rassool and Hayes, took interest in her “in life and death” because he thought she represented a “pure bushman”. So, he took her body measurements and face mask while she was alive, and her body cast and skeleton after she died.

In the same year as the Wits expedition to the Kalahari,/Keri-/Keri was brought by Dart to Johannesburg for further research. She was put on display at the Empire Exhibition celebrating Johannesburg’s 50th anniversary. My research into the Dart archives revealed that a doctor in 1939 alerted Dart that /Keri/Keri had pneumonia and was at Outdshoorn Hospital. Anticipating her death, Dart immediately made arrangements for her body to be transported to Johannesburg.

Several days later, /Keri-/Keri died. In many ways, /Keri-/Keri’s story is reminiscent of Sarah Baartman’s, who had been examined by the French anatomist George Cuvier more than a century earlier. Dart saw /Keri-/Keri’s body and her skeleton as a specimen to be studied. For close to 60 years, her body cast remained on display at Wits and her skeleton remained on a shelf in the Raymond Dart collection of human skeletons.

In the wake of World War II and the Holocaust, Unesco drafted a statement on race in 1950, which began: “Scientists have reached general agreement in recognising that mankind is one; that all men belong to the same species Homo sapiens.”

In the same year, the apartheid government implemented the Population Registration Act of 1950, which defined a “coloured person” as someone “who is not a white person or a native”.

Scientists in South Africa continued to work with the concept of “race typology” well into the 1960s. Phillip Tobias, the successor to Dart as head of the department of anatomy at Wits, continued to embrace the existence of racial types, which largely coincided with apartheid’s racial classifications. Tobias built the face mask and skeleton collections at Wits into the 1980s.

Wits University Professor Phillip Tobias measuring an unnamed person during an expedition to the Kalahari in the early 1950s.

In March 2019, just weeks before the Stellenbosch study was published, the American Association of Physical Anthropology put out a new statement on race.

“Racial categories do not provide an accurate picture of human biological variation”, it said, adding “the Western concept of race must be understood as a classification system that emerged from, and in support of, European colonialism, oppression, and discrimination”, and “no group of people is, or ever has been, biologically homogeneous or ‘pure’.”

In the wake of the campaign to retract the journal article, the Psychological Society of South Africa put out an open critique of the study: “The authors have unjustifiably and exploitatively used the apartheid-inspired understanding of race.”

Initially, the university’s deputy vice-chancellor for research, Professor Eugene Cloete, said the findings of the study were those of the authors alone, but in a later statement, he “apologised unconditionally for the pain and anguish which resulted from this article”. The statement made no mention of the faulty scientific assumptions and methodology. Subsequently, the university announced it would conduct a “thorough investigation into all aspects of this study”.

On May 2, the editors and publisher of Ageing, Neuropsychology and Cognition, the UK journal that published the Stellenbosch study, retracted the article, noting: “While this article was peer-reviewed and accepted according to the Journal’s policy, it has subsequently been determined that serious flaws exist in the methodology and reporting of the original study.”

However, the retraction did not critique the framing of the study specifically for its focus on “coloured women,” nor did it acknowledge the perpetuation of racist stereotypes.

The campaign team pointed out this was not only an issue for the four white women researchers. The problem goes much deeper; it is systemic. There is a new generation of academics that did not see the problem.

Everyone who spoke out against the study sounded an important alarm. The lesson is not only for Stellenbosch, but for every academic and research institution in South Africa and around the world to promote sound science.

Each university and journal must reflect on its assumptions in biology, medicine, natural sciences, anthropology and the social sciences. This episode points to the need for greater diversity in these fields, as well as on ethics committees, among peer reviewers and on editorial boards.

Christa Kuljian holds a BA in the history of science from Harvard University. She is the author of Darwin’s Hunch: Science, Race and the Search for Human Origins (Jacana, 2016), a research associate at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research and is working on a new book about the history of sexism in science. This article was first published in the Mail&Guardian. Read the original article.

[admin]

Part 1 of 3

The Enigma of Raymond Dart
by Robin Denicourt
International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 42, No. 2
2009
©  2009 by the Board of Trustees of Boston University

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

Dart has entered the literature as one of the great scholar-scientists of the era… the brilliance and accuracy of Dart's claim… Dart had become a hero in South Africa, and the boldness and originality of his work, built his reputation as one of the great figures in interpreting the human record. The conventional image in print is of a scientist ahead of his time, with a major breakthrough that took two decades for the world to recognize… Raymond Dart was born in Brisbane, Australia -- dramatically so, during the flooding of the town in 1893… Dart was clearly an outstanding student… Dart's career in Johannesburg fulfilled a valuable role in developing medical teaching… the Australopithecus article that marked him for international fame… the bold statement that it represented "an extinct race of apes intermediate between living anthropoids and man ... an extinct link between man and his simian ancestor”… a rare confidence… remarkable on two grounds… the high reputation that Dart had gained… Of course Dart was not the only scientist of his generation to identify distinct racial groups… wild hypotheses seem not to have damaged his credibility in palaeoanthropology where his critics evaluated his views on their own terms… As the holder of a chair in anatomy, he had to be taken more seriously in writing on the physical anthropology of African peoples… We now know, of course, that a complex network of Indian Ocean trade has linked the African farming communities of the east African coast to the wider world for more than two millennia… the Swaziland research did make one claim that would last: that for the early first-millennium origins of the Iron Age in southern Africa …. interpretation also needs to go beyond that of Saul Dubow's discussion of Dart and "scientific racism...Dart may have lagged behind some of the challenges and changes to the established approaches in physical anthropology, but he had not been responsible for creating them. "Scientific racism" is not inevitably associated with practical racial discrimination. Dart though never actively political is credited with opening the Wits Medical School to non-white students, and with criticising discriminatory policies. Early in his South African years he stated publicly there was no justification in biology for intolerance on racial grounds… In the apartheid era, Dart's followers could comfortably distance themselves from the most extreme racial paradigms and Dart could concentrate on different topics such as the osteodontokeratic… Dart's enthusiasm for exotic origins and links in the past of the African continent, especially his challenge to the African origins of Great Zimbabwe, reinforced white prejudices and was echoed in Southern African white communities well into the 1970s. Isolated from European culture at the furthest end of a vast continent, historical links to ancient Mediterranean civilizations were immensely reassuring… young academic institutions of the dominions needed to demonstrate their strengths. The Australian Dart helped put South African science on the world map, and scientific achievement on the Southern African map… An element here might be the brashness of the outsider to a world of science dominated by metropolitan Europe: the independent Australian character…maverick … Part of the explanation for Dart's approach is the baleful influence of Sir Grafton Elliot Smith… If Elliot Smith was a major influence on Dart seeking to create a reputation in anthropology and archaeology, Phillip Tobias was a major influence on maintaining that reputation through and beyond the last decades of Dart's life. Because of the high regard in which Tobias has been held -- and continues to be held -- his championing and defence of the Dart reputation has had real impact… some of Dart's continuing influence must be attributed to his personal charm and charisma alongside the awe in which he was held… it is not impossible that a second of his many adventurous hypotheses might in time be seen as an inspired guess matching a newly accepted argument…. Even recently interpretations of population movements from (and at times into) the African continent have conveniently ignored geographical limitations and boundaries and the principle of Occam's Razor, to support complex explanatory models…. We have referred to the distance drawn by Glyn Daniel between scientific archaeology and "the lunatic fringe" as if there is a clear line applicable at all times…. There are problems with such a simple approach… This seems too simplistic and pious a division between good and bad, science and pseudo-science, us and them. There are many examples in which the rational and the irrational coexist. We are frequently reminded how Isaac Newton was an enthusiast for astrology while laying the basis for scientific physics; that while Conan Doyle defined the epitomy of rationality and logic in his detective novels his greatest passion was for the spiritualist movement; and in seeing how many contemporary leaders of scientific research attest to an unwavering fundamental religious faith coexisting with their research methodology… Dart was a distinguished (if at times eccentric) teacher. His descriptive anatomy appears robust, though not free from criticism… He could have maintained a career involving contributions restricted to formal anatomy. But he chose to dip into unfamiliar worlds… In the division of scientific from non-scientific method, one may argue that the "discovery" of Australopithecus was not methodologically a scientific discovery but a fortunate stumbling on the truth. It is good to remember scholars for their lasting contribution to our knowledge, but we need to be aware that the process of creating that knowledge is not always clear, clean, and, methodologically sound.

-- The Enigma of Raymond Dart, by Robin Denicourt

Apologist: a person who makes a defense in speech or writing of a belief, idea, etc.; one of the authors of the early Christian apologies in defense of the faith.

-- Apologist, by Dictionary.com

Introduction

Raymond Dart (l89l-1988) is famous for the 1925 discovery of the Taung cranium from South Africa he named Australopithecus africanus, and its identification as the first support for Darwin's hypothesis of the African ancestry of mankind. Dart's claims, first rejected, were later seen as one of the great scientific discoveries of the twentieth century. This formed one surviving part of a substantial corpus of wild claims made in Dart's writings. These included the taming of fire; the osteodontokeratic; cannibalism and the killer ape; Boskop man; work on racial origins; on exotic invaders into southern Africa from the ancient Near East, the Mediterranean, and China; on phallic symbols; and Stone Age miners.

Dart's career and work presents the intriguing circumstance of a scientist and writer who challenged science with a daring proposal which was considered false and was later fully accepted as scientifically valid, and used his reputation to forward numerous arguments which could not stand up to scientific scrutiny.1

Almost every survey of world prehistory, the "origins of mankind," or the history of palaeoanthropology and archaeology includes Dart's 1925 achievement. Through this discovery, Dart has entered the literature as one of the great scholar-scientists of the era.

Dart's claims were described later that year in Nature by a leader in the field, Sir Arthur Keith, as "preposterous,"2 a view echoed by other researchers. It would take until after the discovery of the Transvaal Australopithecines in the later 1930s before the scientific community began to acknowledge the brilliance and accuracy of Dart's claim, and it was the mid 1940s before the major critics stepped back. But already by that date Dart had become a hero in South Africa, and the boldness and originality of his work, built his reputation as one of the great figures in interpreting the human record. The conventional image in print is of a scientist ahead of his time, with a major breakthrough that took two decades for the world to recognize.

It is therefore ironic that in a very productive career of writing, together with numerous public presentations, the majority of themes and arguments that Dart pursued in archaeology and physical anthropology could indeed be described as "preposterous" -- clearly so in terms of today's knowledge, but many running directly against the methodology, knowledge, and scientific understanding of his own time. While Dart's description of Australopithecus seems methodologically scientific, his analysis was one of many interpretations in his body of work made with less than strictly scientific methodology, but one that proved sustainable through the later scientific research of others.

Most current references to Dart's role are brief and reverential.3 This paper seeks to interpret the enigma of a scientist who doggedly pursued numerous lines of argument seen as false and misguided, but one of which -- the identification of Australopithecus africanus -- has created his lasting reputation. The career of Raymond Dart, and the fate of his views, raise questions about the nature of science in early twentieth-century "colonial" culture and the particular world of white South Africa's emerging ideologies. We argue that the phenomena of Dart's broad-ranging hypotheses in archaeology, biological anthropology and beyond do not have a single cause. They reflect the intersection of his personality, his own non-metropolitan background, his eccentric influences, and the interpretative models of the inter-war period (especially on race), with a white South Africa that embraced the opportunity for a new role in world science alongside specific ideological needs to reinforce social structure and identity. They also serve to raise questions about the boundary between science and pseudoscience.

"Man of Grit"

Raymond Dart was born in Brisbane, Australia -- dramatically so, during the flooding of the town in 1893. Attending Ipswich Grammar School, he initially followed his family's strongly religious and fundamentalist views, and decided to become a medical missionary. However, before moving to study medicine at Sydney University, he accepted a scholarship to study science at the University of Queensland and here, brought into contact with both zoology and geology, he moved away from his fundamentalist assumptions and changed his worldview, seeing "the discrepancies between Fundamentalism and the facts"4 and accepting an evolutionary model.

He continued to Sydney University in 1914 to study for his medical degree. A resident of St Andrew's College, his contemporaries included another great Australian in the history of archaeology, Vere Gordon Childe (a tutor at the college whose radical views led to opposition that forced his resignation) and the future Australian Labor foreign minister and UN pioneer H.V. Evatt, with whom Dart wrote a student article.

At the very start of his medical studies Dart was able to attend the 1914 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science held in Sydney. Here he heard the (Australian born) Grafton Elliot Smith (1871- 1937), whose reputation as a distinguished anatomist is accompanied by his infamy (to archaeologists) as a leading proponent of hyper-diffusionism, of which Glyn Daniel has written "why does the world tolerate this academic rubbish?"5

Hyperdiffusionism is a pseudoarchaeological hypothesis suggesting that certain historical technologies or ideas originated with a single people or civilization before their adoption by other cultures. Thus, all great civilizations that share similar cultural practices, such as construction of pyramids, derived them from a single common progenitor.According to its proponents, examples of hyperdiffusion can be found in religious practices, cultural technologies, megalithic monuments, and lost ancient civilizations.

The idea of hyperdiffusionism differs in several ways from trans-cultural diffusion, one being that hyperdiffusionism is usually not testable due to its pseudo-scientific nature. Additionally, unlike trans-cultural diffusion, hyperdiffusionism does not use trading and cultural networks to explain the expansion of a society within a single culture; instead, hyperdiffusionists claim that all major cultural innovations and societies derive from one (usually lost) ancient civilization. Ergo, the Tucson artifacts derive from Ancient Rome, carried by the "Romans who came across the Atlantic and then overland to Arizona;" this is believed because the artifacts resembled known ancient Roman artifacts.

Mainstream archeologists regard the hydrodiffusionism hypothesis as pseudoarchaeology.

-- Hyperdiffusionism in archaeology, by Wikipedia

Elliot Smith became a crucial influence on Dart's career, providing him with opportunities for employment but powerfully idiosyncratic outlooks on human prehistory. Dart attributed to Elliot Smith his leaning towards these interests, noting in 1929 that "anthropology in recent years has received a great stimulus through the "Diffusionist theory" of Elliot Smith relative to cultures.''6

Dart was clearly an outstanding student. He took on a job of University Demonstrator in 1917 while still studying, but with the Great War still being fought, in 1918 he joined the army as a Captain (aged twenty-five), his ship stopping off at Durban and Cape Town to give him a first sight of South Africa where he was to spend most of his life. As the war ended soon after Dart's arrival in London, he stayed to take up a position as Elliot Smith's assistant at University College London, teaching anatomy but also beginning a program of research in medicine that could have led his reputation in a quite different direction, While in London, Dart was able to examine in 1922 the Broken Hill fossil from Northern Rhodesia (now Kabwe in Zambia), which had been found the previous year.7

It was to Elliot Smith that Dart owed the appointment that made his career and life in South Africa, In January 1923 -- aged only twenty-nine -- he moved to South Africa to take up the position of full professor of anatomy in the medical school of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (the university had received its charter in 1922), which was to be his home for the next sixty-five years until his death in 1988 at the age of ninety, five. He long remained active in writing, public presentations of his work and support of research that followed his own enthusiasms, with fieldwork privately funded through the Bernard Price Institute of Palaeontological Research (founded 1945) and other bodies.

Taung and Australopithecus

Dart's career in Johannesburg fulfilled a valuable role in developing medical teaching -- he was dean and head of the medical school for eighteen years, However there was a major shift in his research interests. As he was to explain:

The abysmal lack of equipment and literature found me to develop an interest in other subjects, particularly anthropology, for which Elliot Smith had fired my imagination.8

He added that "here in Johannesburg, as with Elliot Smith in Cairo, bones had to be studied instead of brains. Physical anthropological issues screamed for initiation in this stupendous continent of Africa."9

Of Dart's papers published in 1974,10 a broad categorization suggests topics in medicine and anatomy numbered five out of six to 1923, seven out of thirteen to 1924, but only 5 percent (twenty-four papers) to 1974, compared to fifty-nine in physical anthropology and ninety-four in archaeology.

His first paper in this area11 was on "Boskop man," a topic we consider further below, and he completed several papers in archaeology and physical anthropology before the Australopithecus article that marked him for international fame.

The story of the discovery of the Taung skull is well known and is now part of the history, even the folklore, of studies of early man. In brief, Dart encouraged his students to collect fossils, and one of these students, Josephine Salmons, brought in a fossilized baboon skull found at a lime works quarry in Taung(s) in the then northern Cape Province (today's North West Province). Dart showed this to geologist colleague R.B. Young who arranged for further samples of bone-bearing breccia to be brought from Taung. It was one of those that contained the famous Taung child skull.

The timetable of events has been reconstructed by Tobias.12 The breccia containing the skull was handed to Dart on 28 November 1924, and he began work on 1 December to free the fossil from the rock. The South African teaching year had already finished for the summer, and fortunately this year Dart was not involved in external examining. The cleaning process took three weeks and was completed around 23 December, but clearly during the physical procedure Dart developed his unambiguous hypothesis that this was an early hominid, quite different from any found to date in Africa and evidence to support Darwin's hypothesis of the African origins of man. In another seventeen days he completed his description, comparison, analysis, the naming of Australopithecus africanus, and the bold statement that it represented "an extinct race of apes intermediate between living anthropoids and man ... an extinct link between man and his simian ancestor." The article was despatched together with its illustrations on 6 January 1925 (six weeks after the arrival of the find) to catch the boat to England; it reached the editor of Nature on 30 January and with the initial encouragement of Keith and other scholars -- the "refereeing" seems to have been by telephone13 -- Nature published it on 7 February 1925.14 Indeed, Dart responded to local journalistic nquiries certain that the paper would be published in Nature by that date.

Such a process implies a rare confidence. Solly Zuckerman assessing this event wrote sarcastically of the "fossil ape-like skull which, presumably by divine guidance, Dart immediately recognized as the 'missing link' ..."15 and was skeptical that one could use purely visual impressions for a diagnosis of relationships of animal bones. The hypothesis was remarkable on two grounds. There was no reliable stratigraphic dating to provide a chronological framework for the find. Indeed this has remained a problem16; Dart quotes identifications of the limeworks deposit as "probably Pieistocene"17 though he had thought it Pliocene.18 The ancestral claim was primarily on morphological grounds and, since this was the skull of a child of about 5 years, the more difficult for comparative purposes. Further, the location, in the open dry lands of South Africa, contrasted starkly with the forest environment of Africa's great apes that had inspired Darwin's 1871 prophesy about the African origins of man.

In the cautious scientific world of the twenty-first century it is instructive to note this accelerated time scale of the exercise that led to the discovery and announcement of Austrolopithecus. It makes an interesting contrast with the timetable for the announcement of the most important and exciting recent hominin discovery, that of Homo floresiensis. There the key skeletal material was discovered in early August 2003, and the scientific study began on 22 September 2003. 19 The definitive articles reporting these finds were sent and received by Nature on 3 March 2004 (only five-and-a-half months later, held up to await additional dating evidence). They were reviewed that month positively but with recommendations for additional information, analyses, and CT scans that led to further work on the material. The revisions of the two articles were resubmilted and accepted on 18 August and 8 September -- but only published on 28 October 2004 as Morwood noted, one year, one month, and one week after the analysis began.20

In Nature a week after Dart's announcement, the four leading British scholars in the field commented on the claims: Keith, Elliot Smith, Smith Woodward and Duckworth.21 In general they praised Dart's description of the material but put on hold their acceptance of his claims and classification while awaiting the full publication of the material. Keith doubted the creation of a new family, seeing Australopithecus as the same genus or sub-family as the chimpanzee and gorilla, and noted the need for geological evidence to settle its relationship. Elliot Smith too grouped the find with the African great apes and sought geological dating.

Doubts continued to be expressed about the claims made by Dart, and those who had supported their publication began to distance themselves from his conclusions. Most startlingly Sir Arthur Keith, once he had studied casts of the finds in London, wrote in Nature in July 1925: "An examination of the casts exhibited at Wembley will satisfy zoologists that [Dart's] claim is preposterous,"22 He was referring specifically to Dart's claim for a new family and a position intermediate between living anthropoids and man.

"Preposterous" is a strong word in science. It should be remembered that at this time Keith was a leading proponent of the role of Piltdown Man, even if one rejects suggestions that he was directly implicated in the fake.23

A skull, a supposedly very ancient skull, long used as one of the most powerful pieces of evidence documenting the Darwinian position upon human evolution, has been proven to be a forgery, a hoax perpetrated by an unscrupulous but learned amateur. In the fall of 1953 the famous Piltdown cranium, known in scientific circles all over the world since its discovery in a gravel pit on the Sussex Downs in 1911, was jocularly dismissed by the world's press as the skull that had "made monkeys out of the anthropologists." Nobody remembered in 1953 that Wallace, the great evolutionist, had protested to a friend in 1913, "The Piltdown skull does not prove much, if anything!"

Why had Wallace made that remark? Why, almost alone among the English scientists of his time, had he chosen to regard with a dubious eye a fossil specimen that seemed to substantiate the theory to which he and Darwin had devoted their lives? He did so for one reason: he did not believe what the Piltdown skull appeared to reveal as to the nature of the process by which the human brain had been evolved. He did not believe in a skull which had a modern brain box attached to an apparently primitive face and given, in the original estimates, an antiquity of something over a million years...

The Piltdown hoaxer, in attaching an ape jaw to a human skull fragment, had, perhaps unwittingly, created a creature which supported the Darwinian idea of man, not too unlike the man of today, extending far back into pre-Ice Age times...

Today Piltdown is gone. In its place we are confronted with the blunt statement of two modern scientists, M. R. A. Chance and A. P. Mead.

"No adequate explanation," they confess over eighty years after Darwin scrawled his vigorous "No!" upon Wallace's paper, "has been put forward to account for so large a cerebrum as that found in man."

We have been so busy tracing the tangible aspects of evolution in the forms of animals that our heads, the little globes which hold the midnight sky and the shining, invisible universes of thought, have been taken about as much for granted as the growth of a yellow pumpkin in the fall.

Now a part of this mystery as it is seen by the anthropologists of today lies in the relation of the brain to time. "If," Wallace had said, "researches in all parts of Europe and Asia fail to bring to light any proofs of man's presence far back in the Age of Mammals, it will be at least a presumption that he came into existence at a much later date and by a more rapid process of development.'" If human evolution should prove to be comparatively rapid, "explosive" in other words, Wallace felt that his position would be vindicated, because such a rapid development of the brain would, he thought, imply a divinely directed force at work in man. In the 1870's when he wrote, however, human prehistory was largely an unknown blank. Today we can make a partial answer to Wallace's question. Since the exposure of the Piltdown hoax all of the evidence at our command -- and it is considerable -- points to man, in his present form, as being one of the youngest and newest of all earth's swarming inhabitants.

The Ice Age extends behind us in time for, at most, a million years. Though this may seem long to one who confines his studies to the written history of man, it is, in reality, a very short period as the student of evolution measures time. It is a period marked more by the extinction of some of the last huge land animals, like the hairy mammoth and the saber- toothed tiger, than it is by the appearance of new forms of life. To this there is only one apparent exception: the rise and spread of man over the Old World land mass.

Most of our knowledge of him--even in his massive-faced, beetle-browed stage--is now confined, since the loss of Piltdown, to the last half of the Ice Age. [f we pass backward beyond this point we can find traces of crude tools, stone implements which hint that some earlier form of man was present here and there in Europe, Asia, and particularly Africa in the earlier half of Ice Age time, but to the scientist it is like peering into the mists floating over an unknown landscape. Here and there through the swirling vapor one catches a glimpse of a shambling figure, or a half-wild primordial face stares back at one from some momentary opening in the fog. Then, just as one grasps at a clue, the long gray twilight settles in and the wraiths and the half-heard voices pass away.

Nevertheless, particularly in Africa, a remarkable group of human-like apes have been discovered: creatures with small brains and teeth of a remarkably human cast. Prominent scientists are still debating whether they are on the direct line of ascent to man or are merely near relatives of ours. Some, it is now obvious, existed too late in time to be our true ancestors, though this does not mean that their bodily characters may not tell us what the earliest anthropoids who took the human turn of the road were like.

These apes are not all similar in type or appearance. They are men and yet not men. Some are frailer-bodied, some have great, bone-cracking jaws and massive gorilloid crests atop their skulls. This fact leads us to another of Wallace's remarkable perceptions of long ago. With the rise of the truly human brain, Wallace saw that man had transferred to his machines and tools many of the alterations of parts that in animals take place through evolution of the body. Unwittingly, man had assigned to his machines the selective evolution which in the animal changes the nature of its bodily structure through the ages. Man of today, the atomic manipulator, the aeronaut who flies faster than sound, has precisely the same brain and body as his ancestors of twenty thousand years ago who painted the last Ice Age mammoths on the walls of caves in France.

To put it another way, it is man's ideas that have evolved and changed the world about him. Now, confronted by the lethal radiations of open space and the fantastic speeds of his machines, he has to invent new electronic controls that operate faster than his nerves, and he must shield his naked body against atomic radiation by the use of protective metals. Already he is physically antique in this robot world he has created. All that sustains him is that small globe of gray matter through which spin his ever-changing conceptions of the universe.

Yet, as Wallace, almost a hundred years ago, glimpsed this timeless element in man, he uttered one more prophecy. When we come to trace out history into the past, he contended, sooner or later we will come to a time when the body of man begins to differ and diverge more extravagantly in its appearance. Then, he wrote, we shall know that we stand close to the starting point of the human family. In the twilight before the dawn of the human mind, man will not have been able to protect his body from change and his remains will bear the marks of all the forces that play upon the rest of life. He will be different in his form. He will be, in other words, as variable in body as we know the South African man-apes to be.

Today, with the solution of the Piltdown enigma, we must settle the question of the time involved in human evolution in favor of Wallace, not Darwin; we need not, however, pursue the mystical aspects of Wallace's thought -- since other factors yet to be examined may well account for the rise of man. The rapid fading out of archaeological evidence of tools in lower Ice Age times -- along with the discovery of man-apes of human aspect but with ape-sized brains, yet possessing a diverse array of bodily characters -- suggests that the evolution of the human brain was far more rapid than that conceived of in early Darwinian circles. At that time it was possible to hear the Eskimos spoken of as possible survivals of Miocene men of several million years ago. By contrast to this point of view, man and his rise now appear short in time -- explosively short. There is every reason to believe that whatever the nature of the forces involved in the production of the human brain, a long slow competition of human group with human group or race with race would not have resulted in such similar mental potentialities among all peoples everywhere. Something -- some other factor -- has escaped our scientific attention.

There are certain strange bodily characters which mark man as being more than the product of a dog-eat-dog competition with his fellows. He possesses a peculiar larval nakedness, difficult to explain on survival principles; his periods of helpless infancy and childhood are prolonged; he has aesthetic impulses which, though they vary in intensity from individual to individual -- appear in varying manifestations among all peoples. He is totally dependent, in the achievement of human status, upon the careful training he receives in human society.

Unlike a solitary species of animal, he cannot develop alone. He has suffered a major loss of precise instinctive controls of behavior. To make up for this biological lack, society and parents condition the infant, supply his motivations, and promote his long-drawn training at the difficult task of becoming a normal human being. Even today some individuals fail to make this adjustment and have to be excluded from society.

We are now in a position to see the wonder and terror of the human predicament: man is totally dependent on society. Creature of dream, he has created an invisible world of ideas, beliefs, habits, and customs which buttress him about and replace for him the precise instincts of the lower creatures. In this invisible universe he takes refuge, but just as instinct may fail an animal under some shift of environmental conditions, so man's cultural beliefs may prove inadequate to meet a new situation, or, on an individual level, the confused mind may substitute, by some terrible alchemy, cruelty for love.

The profound shock of the leap from animal to human status is echoing still in the depths of our subconscious minds. It is a transition which would seem to have demanded considerable rapidity of adjustment in order for human beings to have survived, and it also involved the growth of prolonged bonds of affection in the subhuman family, because otherwise its naked, helpless offspring would have perished.

It is not beyond the range of possibility that this strange reduction of instincts in man in some manner forced a precipitous brain growth as a compensation -- something that had to be hurried for survival purposes. Man's competition, it would thus appear, may have been much less with his own kind than with the dire necessity of building about him a world of ideas to replace his lost animal environment. As we will show later, he is a pedomorph, a creature with an extended childhood.

Modern science would go on to add that many of the characters of man, such as his lack of fur, thin skull, and globular head, suggest mysterious changes in growth rates which preserve, far into human maturity, foetal or infantile characters which hint that the forces creating man drew him fantastically out of the very childhood of his brutal forerunners. Once more the words of Wallace come back to haunt us: "We may safely infer that the savage possesses a brain capable, if cultivated and developed, of performing work of a kind and degree far beyond what he ever requires it to do."...

Ironically enough, science, which can show us the flints and the broken skulls of our dead fathers, has yet to explain how we have come so far so fast, nor has it any completely satisfactory answer to the question asked by Wallace long ago. Those who would revile us by pointing to an ape at the foot of our family tree grasp little of the awe with which the modern scientist now puzzles over man's lonely and supreme ascent. As one great student of paleoneurology, Dr. Tilly Edinger, recently remarked, "If man has passed through a Pithecanthropus phase, the evolution of his brain has been unique, not only in its result but also in its tempo .... Enlargement of the cerebral hemispheres by 50 per cent seems to have taken place, speaking geologically, within an instant, and without having been accompanied by any major increase in body size."

The true secret of Piltdown, though thought by the public to be merely the revelation of an unscrupulous forgery, lies in the fact that it has forced science to reexamine carefully the history of the most remarkable creation in the world -- the human brain.

-- The Real Secret of Piltdown, from "The Immense Journey," by Loren Eiseley

The expansion of the human brain during evolution, specifically of the neocortex, is linked to our cognitive abilities such as reasoning and language. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden have been studying a gene called ARHGAP11B for many years. This gene is found only in humans and triggers an increased production of brain stem cells – a prerequisite for a larger brain. Together with colleagues at the Central Institute for Experimental Animals (CIEA) in Kawasaki and the Keio University in Tokyo, both located in Japan, they could now show that this human-specific gene, when expressed to physiological levels, causes an enlarged neocortex in the common marmoset, a non-human primate. This suggests that the ARHGAP11B gene may have indeed caused neocortex expansion during human evolution.

-- Evolutionary key for a bigger brain: Dresden and Japanese researchers show that a human-specific brain size gene causes a larger neocortex in the common marmoset, a non-human primate, by Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

And it was Keith who was to publish a detailed account of the Australopithecus skull, leaving Dart's own monograph unpublished.24 Dart issued a shorter description of the teeth but his further publications on the find were mainly about its significance, rather than more detailed scientific studies.

What confirmed Dart's claims was the discovery of further Australopithecines by Robert Broom and others in the southern Transvaal cave sites of South Africa from the mid 1930s onwards. These gave support to the hypothesis generated from Dart's single, juvenile, undated skull, and confirmed in the wider scientific world the high reputation that Dart had gained among his local South African supporters. W. Le Gros Clark was influential in securing acceptance at the Pan African Congress of Prehistory in 1947, and that year Sir Arthur Keith formally acknowledged Dart's claim.25 Only in 1959 would Dart release (co-authored with Dennis Craig) his book length public account of the achievement of discovering, identifying, and defending the claims for Australopithecus at Taung.

Makapansgat and the Taming of Fire

Dart re-entered the area of detailed scientific work on Australopithecus with the finds at Makapansgat, in the northern Transvaal. Indeed, only five months after the Taung announcement, Dart noted the apparent presence of carbon in bone assemblages from the site and stated ''there seems little doubt from the evidence available that the bone-bed is the 'kitchen-midden' result of human occupation at a remote epoch."26 But it was over two decades before he could test this bold statement. In a field project initially led by Phillip Tobias (who would become Dart's protege), and continued under Dart's staff, Australopithecine fossils were discovered from 1947 onwards and described in great detail (and without challenge) by Dart in a series of technical articles. Ironically he first ascribed them to a species different from both the Taung and the southern Transvaal sites, as Australopithecus prometheus. This pattern of a new species for a new find is typical of the fate that has befallen many hominin fossil finds at the hands of their discoverers.27 Dart is also widely credited with suggesting the name habilis for Homo habilis.28 In due course the Makapansgat finds would be considered by most scientists to belong to the same species as the Taung child, A. africanus.

Dart's named his hominid finds as A. prometheus because he saw the use of fire as another skill of the early hominid community. Some of the vertebrate bones from the site were considered to contain free carbon, which he attributed to the deliberate use of fire by human predators:

The special significance of the Makapansgat valley limeworks deposits in unravelling these early human mysteries lies in their being true hearths and thus providing information ... concerning man's hunting skill, his probable weapons and his use of fire.29

Subsequent research and discussion has not supported Dart's claim for the human use of fire by Australopithecus at Makapansgat, or indeed for the presence of fire, and at least some of the blackening has been explained by manganese.30 While there is still active debate about the dates for the first controlled use of fire, the claims for Makapansgat are not even considered.31 In due course Dart seems to have backtracked on his certainty here.32

More strangely, Tobias has stated33 that Dart's confidence in the hominid source of fire at Makapansgat had persuaded him to identify a fossil baboon skull as Australopithecus prometheus two years before the actual Australopithecus was found, and to write a paper for this claim which he withdrew before publication.

It was, however, the Makapansgat site which led to one of Dart's most controversial claims, that of the Osteodontokeratic.

[admin]

Part 2 of 3

Osteodontokeratic Culture and Cannibalism

The most famous of Dart's unaccepted claims was that the faunal assemblages which included the Makapansgat Australopithecines reflected a complex pattern of human selection (rather than accumulation by predators), deliberate fashioning, and use as systematic equipment of tools and weapons. Since he applied this to the fashioning of bone, tooth and horn he linked them by defining an "osteodontokeratic" culture, describing a "Bone Age" which preceded the "Stone Age," for no stone with signs of use were found with the Makapansgat breccia. This theme became the focus of Dart's lectures and enthusiasm, with numerous articles as well as a major monograph arguing the case.34 In his personal memoirs he devotes far more space to this topic than to his landmark discovery and identification of Australopithecus at Taung.

What led to the osteodontokeratic hypothesis was the non-random occurrences of animal parts and the fractures on many of these. This persuaded Dart that the sample showed deliberate selection and preparation for tool use: saws or scrapers from teeth, use of long bones for clubs and so on. Individual bones he interpreted as tools of quite specialized function, including a dagger,35 and even platters, bowls and drinking cups made from skulls.36

Sensuous “dakinis” trembling with lust, who not uncommonly appear as figures of horror, goddesses with bowls made of skulls and cleavers in their hands….effigies of human skulls were worked on their breasts and other parts of their raiment…In their right hand they hold a bell or fan, and in their left a bowl cut out of a human skull…fiends now collect the fragments into a huge silver basin shaped like a skull…he puts into the boiling oil a skull filled with a mixture of arak (rum), poison, and blood…In the Hevajra Tantra the adept must drink the menstrual blood of his mudra out of a skull bowl …The eating bowl of the immured monk was not the usual human skull, but was also made from the cured skin of a woman’s breast…stones with which human skulls had been staved in, for the “strengthening of holy order”… They drink treachery like milk ... skulls, bones, smokehouses, oil and fat bring great joy”… the Buddha Hevajra and his consort Nairatmya: surrounded by eight “burning” dakinis he performs a bizarre dance of hell and is so intoxicated by his killing instinct that he holds a skull bowl in each of his sixteen hands, in which gods, humans, and animals are to be found as victims…damaru (a drum made from two skull bowls), kapala (a vessel made out of a human skull), khatvanga (a type of scepter, the tip of which is decorated with three severed human heads), ax, discus, switch, shield, ankusha (elephant hook), arrow, bow, sling, prayer beads made from human bones as well as the severed heads of Brahma…Ritual curved knives, with which they dismember corpses; a skull bowl out of which they slurp all sorts of blood; a small two-ended drum prepared from the brain-pans of two children, with which she summons her companions and a scepter, upon which three skulls are skewered, — are all considered part of a dakini’s standard equipment...the adept may catch the sukra from out of the vagina in a vessel and then drink it. It is not rare for the drinking bowl to be made from a human skull… the women hold a human skull filled with various repulsive substances and a cleaver… Various ritual objects are handed to the women during the ritual of which the majority, if not all, are of an aggressive nature: cleavers, swords, bone trumpets, skulls, skewers… Chopping off hands and splitting skulls are minor things; they can be left to the others! But sewing [people] up in fresh yak skins and letting them roast in the sun — disemboweling while alive, or launching the entrails skywards on bent rods, these are the methods that are loved in Ngolokland… The Maha Siddhas collected alms in a skull bowl… the moment has arrived in which the animal demons (the masked dancers) fall upon the already dismembered lingam and tear it apart for good. The pieces are flung in all directions. Assistant devils collect the scattered fragments in human skulls and in a celebratory procession bring them before Yama, seated upon a throne… The female cannibals are offered a bali pyramid consisting of a skull, torn-off strips of skin, butter lamps filled with human fat, and various organs floating in a strong-smelling liquid made from brain, blood and gall…. René von Nebesky-Wojkowitz describes a number of culinary specialties from the Lamaist “demon recipe books”: cakes made of dark flour and blood; five different sorts of meat, including human flesh; the skull of the child of an incestuous relationship filled with blood and mustard seeds; the skin of a boy; bowls of blood and brain; a lamp filled with human fat with a wick made of human hair; and a dough like mixture of gall, brain, blood and human entrails (Nebesky-Wojkowitz, 1955, p. 261).  

-- The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics in Tibetan Buddhism, by Victor and Victoria Trimondi

Dart developed detailed descriptions of hunting strategies, including breaking open water turtles, clubbing animals and hamstringing them on the run. He saw the damage to baboon skulls as evidence of "well aimed blows on the head with some sort of weapon," with the use of clubs to cause a double fracture. He went on to suggest that the Taung hominid had also slain the fossil baboons found there. He weakened his argument by hyperbolic language about the bloodthirsty regime reflected in these finds, and this led to hard lines being drawn between antagonists on discussions of human nature. "Bludgeoning was characteristic of all South African man-apes." The use of weapons in hunting he suggested was as much cause as effect of hominid bipedalism.37

Since there was damage to some Australopithecus skulls, similar to that seen on baboon skulls, Dart went further to argue that the victims of the hunters included fellow members of their species. Cannibalism in early man he defended as probable in the light of later anthropological and historical evidence on modern mankind.

The osteodontokeratic became a matter of faith for Dart's followers, who could see signs of human usage by looking at the materials, much as "eolith" stone tools from the Pliocene had been supported in Europe and elsewhere. It was an interesting hypothesis and it had deeper impact, for it led to the popular image of man's nature as the killer ape, popularized in writings such as Robert Ardrey's African Genesis.38 The idea was always controversial and while accepted by some prominent prehistorians, it was felt by many scholars to be unsupported by the evidence. Indeed the vigor with which Dart repeated arguments for the osteodontokeratic reflected his awareness of the skepticism with which it was greeted by most scholars and scientists.

However non-human explanations for the non-random accumulation -- including hyena lairs and leopard predation -- continue to be accepted as the most likely source of the selective process.39 Later reconstructions suggest that the use of carnivore teeth on their prey created the impression of the ''well aimed blows to the head." But Dart engaged in vigorous debate with his critics, and challenged from the start the carnivore explanation. Unfortunately much of the debate was in terms of strongly held beliefs and passionate arguments, and may merit revisiting. The osteodontokeratic dominated Dart's last years of his teaching career; he published his major study in 1957 and "retired" from the University staff in 1958 aged sixty-five. But his research and writing activity continued vigorously for much of the remaining thirty years of his life.

Boskop Man

Dart's first article in the fields of palaeoanthropology and archaeology had been published in Nature in 1923, the year of his arrival in South Africa: a survey of the available evidence for a "Boskop" race.40

Although now vanished from the narrative of hominin evolutionary history, Boskop Man, identified from discoveries made in the Transvaal in 1913 (and defined by Robert Broom in 1917 by the species name Homo capensis). flourished under Dart's tutelage for some time. The concept of "Boskop Man" was applied to remains seen as predating those of the Bushmen (San) and the "Strandloper" community of coastal food collection (assumed to be another extinct racial group), with a larger brain capacity than these more recent groups. Dart published a description of "Boskop" finds from the southern Cape Province, identifying them as a race previously occupying all Southern Africa.41 At this stage he was cautious about their affiliation, noting similarities with both Neanderthaloid and with more advanced Cro-Magnon specimens from Europe, and not committing to recognising a separate species Homo capensis.

Evidence of interbreeding or survival of "Boskop" traits came to influence interpretation of other communities in both the fossil record and living communities, so that a skull might even be described as a Bush-Boskop-Bantu hybrid.42

At one level Boskop Man may be seen as no more than a classificatory framework which outlived its usefulness. The broader the range of available skeletal material to study, the weaker the case for this group, so that physical anthropologists came to side with the critics of the term. In a short but definitive review of the issue in 1958, Ronald Singer noted that "it is still a failing among not a few anthropologists ... to plan vast migration routes of so-called prehistoric 'races' which are represented only by odd skulls."43 After a thorough dissection of the entity Singer concluded "it is now obvious that what was justifiable speculation (because of paucity of data) in 1923, and was apparent as speculation in 1947, is inexcusable to maintain in 1958." The concept of Boskop Man was complicated by each new find: at the Cave of Hearths, another site in the Makapan Valley, a mandible was described both as Boskopoid and as Neanderthaloid."

In his critique of "scientific racism," Dubow45 sees a deeper problem, in the search for a pre-modern ''race" which combined physical and cultural attributes. Boskop man was quite different from the contemporary Bushmen (San) of Southern Africa, who were at times seen as a hybrid of Boskop Man and a H. sapiens ancestor. In this interpretation, Dart was locked to a paradigm of typological identity which created straitjackets into which it became increasingly difficult to fit the actual bodies.

Racial Types

The human biology, prehistory and history of Southern Africa were long dogged by a model which Dubow46 has grouped as "scientific racism" -- broadly speaking, a taxonomy of distinct biological races of man, with the assumption that physical race, language and culture are inextricably linked, and with an extension that may connect behavioral characteristics to these groupings -- Dart interlaced the "childlike" physique of the Bushmen with their "childlike" behavior.47 In the 1920s such views were not unusual; in some South African historiography a linked classification survived into the 1970s and even 1980s, despite the artificiality of the model.48

Such a typology stretched the evidence. Dart could not argue for pure physical races but rather for admixture: he described the Bantu tribes of the upper Zambezi and South-West Africa "of an extremely mixed character with a dominating admixture of Bushman blood, and certainly strongly impregnated with Semitic and other Caucasian as well as Mongolian blood."49 In describing three "Strandlopers" from Namibia (former South-West Africa) he makes comparison with Bush and Boskop types but adduces, as with the Southern Kalahari Bushmen, "contamination not with the African Negro but rather with the brown and Mongolian stocks that are ethnically foreign to South and Central Africa."50

Of course Dart was not the only scientist of his generation to identify distinct racial groups, and then find large samples forced them to a complex pattern of admixture to explain variance. "I showed that the Bantu are constituted from a Bush and Negro matrix, but that before they fused, the Bush race had already been infiltrated with brown (Mediterranean) racial elements and the Negro with Nordic elements. Further, for the last thousand years or more, Asiatics of both Armenoid and Mongoloid character have been absorbed into the racial complexity which confronts us in the modern African population."51

An attempt to pull all this together exposed the limitations of the methodology. In his contribution on "Racial origins" to Schapera's 1937 survey of African cultures of Southern Africa52 -- astonishingly, still reprinting as late as 1959 -- Dart conceded that neither European nor Bantu nor Bush is a pure race in South Africa, intermingling with Indians, Malays and other orientals. However his narrative attempts to reconstruct a sequence of population movements that were increasingly complex and improbable: a Boskup race derived from previous admixtures, a Bush race arriving from the north and hybridising with the Boskup, the introduction of Mongoloid elements from Indian Ocean trading but more widely dispersed Semitic traits from northern ("Armenoid'") origin. The Bush race had influence from ancient Egyptians that showed why the Bush-Hottentot languages were so intimately related to the Hamitic group of languages.53 Facial features of the Negroid African populations of southern Africa he calculated as 51.2 percent Negroid, 25.0 percent Bush, 22.3 percent Caucasoid and 1.5 percent Mongoloid. When this otherwise valuable book finally went out of print, Tobias wrote the introductory chapter to its successor and stated clearly "a microtaxonomy of sub-Saharan peoples [is] most difficult if mot impossible."54

Within this model the sites of Mapungubwe and Bambandyanalo in the Limpopo Valley on South Africa's northern border, explored from 1932 onwards, were a particular challenge, associating African culture (linked to the Great Zimbabwe complex) with "Bush-Boskop" human remains. Dart declined responsibility for analysing the skeletal material, but was involved in their interpretation, classifying the site as "pre-Negro"55 and therefore further support for the non-African framework for the stone ruins of southern Africa. Elsewhere he suggested an influence "foreign to Africa and probably Mongolian" in one of the Bambandyanalo skulls.56

Foreign Influences on African Culture and People

A major theme in the worldview of European settler communities in southern Africa has been that, as they perceived the indigenous peoples to be uncivilized, non-African influences were held responsible for features that contradicted this. Dart was fascinated by the model of cultural diffusion associated with his mentor Grafton Elliot Smith. In the battles over interpretation between the new archaeological research and the traditional settler view of these exotic origins and links, Dart's cultural diffusionist ideas reinforced those of the settlers.

Dart issued a manifesto of his hyper-diffusionist views in Nature in March 1925, only the month after announcing Australopithecus africanus. It is interesting that these wild hypotheses seem not to have damaged his credibility in palaeoanthropology where his critics evaluated his views on their own terms. Yet his March 1925 paper is astonishing in its boldness and in its claims.57 Here he lays out clearly his views of the southern African links with, and influence from, the civilizations of the ancient Near East and elsewhere, weaving a selection of data chosen from within what, by then, was already a strong sequence of more scientific prehistoric information. Following his visit in 1927, Miles Burkitt58 would write a major survey of South African prehistory, followed the next year by the definitive study from Goodwin and van Riel Lowe.59

One stimulus to Dart was claims for Babylonian or Phrygian hats in the rock paintings of the Later Stone Age in the Kei valley in the Eastern Cape -- an interpretation that has no supporting evidence in the wider range of rock paintings or the excavated sequence of the region.60 Dart paraphrased this as "the scene of the rape of a naked Bush girl by clothed foreigners wearing Babylonia-Phrygian headgear" seeing this also as the arrival of outside metallurgists into a stone-age society.61 Woven into the narrative of exotic links are isolated coin finds, place names, a photograph of a Zulu woman with ancient Egyptian headgear, and a panoply of unrelated and selected miscellanea that lie far from a calm scientific and testable methodology. Thus two wild hypotheses under the same authorship were accepted for publication in Nature within six weeks: the first would be seen as one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of the twentieth century, the other lies on the furthest shores of pseudoscience.

It is an old joke that archaeologists see sexual symbolism in anything round or long that cannot otherwise be explained, so it is unfortunate that Dart put this into practice. He saw sexual symbolism in the bored stones of southern Africa,62 and phallic symbols elsewhere (though be noted that such interpretation was not accepted by the leading prehistorian of South Africa A.J.H. Goodwin). He rejected as inadequate the explanation of bored stones as weights for digging sticks. (We now recognize that objects may have been created by Later Stone Age communities and collected for symbolic or other amuletic purposes by later African farmers.) Dart took the argument further in tracing phallic influences associated with the Mapungubwe and Zimbabwe cultures, which "appeared to have reached Southern Africa from Egypt, Mesopotamia, or India, perhaps from all three, along with perforated stones upwards of 6.000 years ago."63 Dart traced southern African perforated stones and stones with phallic significance back to ancient Egypt, including a link to predynastic maceheads. Phallic-shaped objects were also connected with the Phoenicians. 64

These influences were dated to early in the southern Africa record, and Dart identified specific symbolism "in Southern Rhodesia and ... South Africa so intimately associated with ancient mythology of Predynastic Egypt that they must be related to one other .... The bearers of those [Mediterranean] cultures brought with them to South Africa not only their stone tools and aquatic ways of life but also their stories and myths."65
 
Dart returned regularly to themes of exotic linkage. He could write

we are now in a position to state that the whole of the eastern portion of the African continent for some hundreds of miles inland ... was exploited by the old colonists ... from South-west Asia in remote ancient time ... these very ancient voyagers not only visited these territories and carried off their denizens, particularly their women, but also intermarried with them and settled down amongst them, bringing to them novel arts and customs.66

Other connections are seen: early Chinese voyagers' links with the east Africa coast from as least as early as the first millennium BC; different Chinese links with southern Africa,67 including Chinese hats as well as Phrygians are found in the rock paintings, and also ancient Egyptians (headgear has a lot to answer for), with the innovative suggestion that the land of Punt in ancient Egyptian texts may have lain south of the Zambezi. Dart also referred to a mysterious undated "galley" found near Cape Town, a find that has not been recorded in the literature.

The stone ruins and associated finds of the Limpopo basin loomed large in these discussions and in particular the site of Great Zimbabwe stimulated explanations of exotic origins. These had been undermined by the archaeological fieldwork undertaken by Randall-MacIver in 1905 and reinforced by Gertrude Caton Thompson in 1929. This work positioned the material solidly within the African cultures, which would subsequently be labeled Iron Age, built by African communities.68

Dart clashed in person with Caton Thompson at the 1929 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science held in Johanncsburg.69 In her privately published autobiography she gives an account of this debate, quoting a rather partisan sounding report in the Cape Times: "He [Dart] spoke in an outburst of curiously unscientific indignation .... After further remarks delivered in a tone of awe-inspiring violence ... he stormed out of the room ... Miss Caton Thompson disposed of him allusively and effectively in a brief reply."70 Dart's memoirs concede to the conflict of ideas71 but indicate his preferred model. "The distribution of ancient copper, tin and gold mines in Southern Africa, along with the comparison that could be made between bronze made in the Transvaal and the bronze statue of Pepi I of the 6th Dynasty [of Egypt] ... and the bronze gates of Shalmaneser in Assyria, demonstrated the ancient nature of the mining background to Rhodesia's ruins." But he was also willing to emphasize Arab influence rather than more ancient sources, going beyond most proponents of that view in seeing the links as from the pre-Islamic Arab world.72 He visited Great Zimbabwe for the first time in 1930, with a follow up visit in 1935, by when he came to favor a Phoenician influence for the ruins.73

A more extreme view -- because it mixed his expertise in physical anthropology with his archaeological interests -- was the claim of wider Asiatic influence on both the cultures and populations of Southern Africa. An undated pendant from near Makapansgat was identified because its unusual form gave further evidence of "foreign contacts of great antiquity."74 First argued in 1925, he repeated his views on foreign influence from the fifth millennium BC over a generation later.75 Here he clearly identifies the influences on (Northern) Rhodesia from the maritime intercourse of Egyptians, Sumerians, and Indians with a port of entry on the eastern coast of Africa.

Dart's proselytizing of non-African influence on African culture was well outside his area of expertise. It was however a passion. He held to diffusionist views about cultural influences and sought physical evidence to support this. In 1929 he wrote of the need for anthropometric survey of Bantu peoples separated into their tribes. "By such a survey properly carried out, my belief concerning Egyptian, Semitic, Arabic and Mongoloid infiltrations into the population ... could be determined or rebutted."76

As the holder of a chair in anatomy, he had to be taken more seriously in writing on the physical anthropology of African peoples, and his argument for Asiatic genetic influence on Southern African indigenous groups reflected his interest in cultural exchanges. He identified Mongolian features among the San (Bushmen) -- influences brought in by an Indian Ocean trading and sailing route. He first began to see Mongolian features in a Kalahari visit in 1936, to select Bushmen, whom he described as "living fossils," for "exhibition" in Johannesburg.

In 1943 Dart suffered a nervous breakdown, but he recovered with renewed energy. He developed an ambition to write a major work about invasions from Europe into the fertile Crescent of the Near East77 but this project seems not to have been fulfilled.

Perhaps Dart's most ambitious use of supposed biological date for revising the narrative of human prehistory is a presentation he gave as his presidential address to the South African Archaeological Society in 1951.78 This complex, bold, and detailed paper, astonishing today in its claims, must have seemed already at the outer edges of science to the Society's leaders, who included the pioneers of scientific archaeology in the region. Although the Society published it, with funding provided by Dart's university, subsequent literature has ignored this aberrant work. The paper is a reminder that developing a complex and sophisticated analysis from a totally flawed hypothesis can only produce flawed results. Dart accepted an argument advanced 20 years earlier by Laurence Snyder that "if any people shows blood-group frequencies similar to a group of peoples not related to it, the conclusion may be drawn that the former traces back to the latter somewhere in its ancestry, or else the former has undergone crossing with the latter group or some similar people." He then used comparisons of the percentage of different blood groups in peoples throughout the world to create a detailed sequence of population movements -- from northern Europe to South Africa, from the Nile Valley to Australia, from the Philippines to the Americas, within a chronology for four major migrations stretching from 7000 BC to 100 AD. These stages saw the successive "negritization," then "caucasianization," then "indonesianization" of the Orient. Such a model would be dramatic as a set of general hypotheses; as a detailed narrative rewriting of prehistory it is quite remarkable. To Dart "blood-groups provide our only clue to the hereditary pattern of races at the dawn of written history"; but the scientific world chose to rely on a broader range of evidence and bypass this dramatic claim.

Dart echoed this theme of improbable migrations in an article unambiguously named "A Hottentot from Hong Kong"79 in which purely anatomical evidence is used to back the case for long distance migration. But here he sees reverse genetic movement "to demonstrate that Boskop (Hottentot) types as well as Bush (Pygmy) types had been dispersed from Africa eastwards as far as China at some time in the prehistoric past of this continent." He echoed a general impression of Mongolian features in both Bush (San) and Bantu (Negro) populations of South Africa. But he was able to make direct comparisons between Hong Kong Chinese from skulls available to him, and local skeletal specimens, comparing especially one Chinese skull with those of "Hottentot" skulls from the Eastern Cape.

While admitting that a single skull is a weak basis for a grand hypothesis, Dart made claims for skeletal links between Mongoloid and southern African materials, invoking "racial intermingling or hybridisation of Mongolians with the pre-Bantu inhabitants of Africa."80 He argued this should not cause surprise because ''there is ample evidence that Mongolian peoples came to Africa regularly by sea during the Sung and Ming dynasties" and asked "at what time ... when the East African coast was free from true negroes -- the Bush-Hottentot inhabitants of East Africa were in nautical contact with Mongoloid peoples.''81 He continued to argue that "an unrecorded sea-traffic which was more Mongolian than Mediterranean ... once dominated the East African coast ... more remote in time than either King Solomon or Queen Hatshepsut.. .. The ancient process of sea-traffic in the Indian Ocean ... carried Pygmy peoples eastwards and was thus responsible for the negritisation of the Orient" He was a little more circumspect in noting the parallels between "ships" of Sarawak and one from Okavango in Namibia.82

This and other selective evidence fed into Dart's early view that there was "an endless procession of emissaries of every great navigating power" to South Africa in pre-European times with the Indian Ocean routes bringing Asiatics to Southern Africa.83 He clearly held to this view for much of his life -- a line of argument diametrically contradictory to the line of development of scientific archaeology, even before the contribution that could be made by modern genetics.

We now know, of course, that a complex network of Indian Ocean trade has linked the African farming communities of the east African coast to the wider world for more than two millennia. Ironically, in what might be seen as a return to some of Dart's themes from a different angle, it has now been claimed by Felix Chami84 that pre-Iron Age communities also had external links, and he has raised the question of earlier links with the north of the continent, as beyond to the east. The archaeological evidence for such possibilities has only emerged very recently and will require further assessment.

Mining before the Metal Ages

Very early in Dart's South African work he was developing theories about mining that linked the subcontinent to the ancient civilizations of the old world. In June 1924, he argued in Nature that the pre-European mining of southern Africa could be attributed to "an ancient people," with a hint that the source of nickel found in the bronzes of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia might be sought in this region.85 Five years later he advanced the argument more boldly, stating that the scale of the mining would "preclude any belief that the products of the industry were consumed by a local population."86 This confirmed his views of southern Africa as the probable source of nickel in the bronze of the ancient Near East, and the presence of the bronze age with "the actual presence there at a remote age of skilled and intelligent craftsmen from a superior cultural area." Noting distant biological influences into the southern African native populations, he concluded, ''there can be little question that the South African Bronze Age synchronizes with the Bronze Ages of the nearest ancient cultures, namely, those of Egypt and Sumeria."

Dart's enthusiasm for such debates on a wider range of topics in African prehistory was encouraged by the opportunity to join the eight month Italian Scientific Expedition through Africa in 1930, during which he visited the ruins of Great Zimbabwe which stimulated his support of the Elliot Smith diffusionist model. In Zambia he began one of his most persistent lines of argument, one that he continued until late in his life, that for ancient mining in the Stone Age. At Mumbwi Caves from excavation of cave deposits he and his colleagues claimed that Late Stone Age communities (with a picture of continuing Middle Stone Age artefact styles and indeed the persistence of handaxe technology) had been miners of metal. Slag materials associated with LSA burials and artefacts were identified as showing ''traces of iron"87 and this led the group to a conviction that these hearths represented slag of furnaces used to smelt iron: "the oldest-known iron foundry in the world.''88 Recognizing the conflict of this model with the associated Stone Age culture he decided that indigenous labor must have been used by non-indigenous miners. On the absence of any iron finds from the Stone Age deposits ''they might be explained by their having rusted away" ... the more likely explanation is that the metal ... was too precious for any of it to be lost"89 -- a useful explanation for archaeologists wishing to prove any theory!

Within three years independent tests suggested the "slag" was a cemented cave deposit, ironically the excavators' first hypothesis,90 and the iron finds were naturally occurring minerals.91 Further work at this site demonstrated a sequence of Later Stone Age settlement into the first millennium AD, though possibly acquiring pottery from Iron Age neighbors, followed by Iron Age settlement around the eleventh century AD, and with some admixture of deposits.92

The ancient mining theme continued at the manganese mines in Chowa near Broken Hill (Kabwe), which lie thought demonstrated contemporaneity with Mumbwa. Like many mines exploited in the twentieth century this mine showed signs of pre-European use but with ambiguous cultural associations, and Dart concluded that ''the manganese mining community were predominantly Stone Age people" with the same mixed cultural material as at Mumbwa.93 The mixture of material he explained by arguing that metal seekers and manganese gatherers of foreign origin, familiar with the uses of manganese, arrived among Stone Age people using "very primitive" types of Early Stone Age implements. He considered this manganese mining pre-dated the Neolithic mines of western Europe.

For both sites Dart developed the view that substantial mining had been undertaken by Stone Age communities working for an external trade, and led by visitors from the Mediterranean: "the obvious channel for that cultural migration was the eastern coast-line. the sea and the water highways ... when the people came ... they arrived in a Moustierian community which had not yet been released from the trammels of Acheulian influences.''94 For making metal with furnaces, "either the metal-gatherers instructed the local inhabitants in that technique, or brought with them followers expert in that technique .... they founded their metallic enterprise amidst an old palaeolithic culture."

He also argued that there had been a search for pyrolusite to be exported for glass making in the Near East. He allocated a chronology of 4000-2000 BC to this mining and the primary link hinted at in the article was back to Ancient Egypt, though he was more cautious in putting this in print. The symbolism of haemalite as a representation of blood explained the early haematite quarrying back to the Middle Stone Age.95

We see here the influence of Elliot Smith's hyperdiffusionism with its primacy for Ancient Egypt. Such writing from others than Dart might have been ignored in the 1930s as a sideline of eccentricity. But, given Dart's reputation in South Africa from his Australopithecine discoveries, his articles on both sites went straight into the distinguished pages of the Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa.

Early mining returned later in Dart's life. In 1934 Dart first heard of finds of ochre on artefacts at Border Cave in Swaziland and he pursued the idea of ancient ochre mining at a site he dated to the Middle Stone Age.96 Excavations under Dart's mentorship waited until much later when his proteges Adrian Boshier and Peter Beaumont made controversial claims for archaeological work in Swaziland from the late 1960s97 continuing the traditions of advancing ideas outside the conventional. Dart and Beaumont announced these results from haematite workings al Ngwenya (Bomvu Ridge) as evidence for iron ore mining initially. They initially dated this nine millennia old and later dated the antiquity of mining to least 28,000 years old, and possible older.98 They emphasized continuity with the mining claims for Chowa, reinforcing Dart's views of a foreign mining group. "The claim made almost 35 years ago, that 'manganese was being deliberately mined in Zambia by a foreign people familiar with its potentialities in Late Stone Age time' ... have been fully justified."99 These claims have not generally been accepted by the archaeological community. However the Swaziland research did make one claim that would last: that for the early first-millennium origins of the Iron Age in southern Africa -- where Castle Cavern produced fifth century AD radiocarbon dates.100

Explaining the Enigma of Dart's Work

Raymond Dart generated multiple hypotheses and interpretations across the boundaries of archaeology, palaeoanthropology and biological anthropology, most of which were not sustainable, and many of which were dismissed or ignored by fellow scientists when they were made. The one has stood the test of time -- Australopithecus africanus -- seems the exception, by good fortune as much as critical methodology.

Such an assessment is at odds with the biographical studies, which either take all Dart's work at face value101 or select the minority which has had lasting use.102 A critical interpretation also needs to go beyond that of Saul Dubow's discussion of Dart and "scientific racism."103 We argue that the explanation for Dart' s ideas, their persistence and their popularity outside of the scientific community can be attributed to the intersection of several factors, especially the nexus of Dart's personality and background with the society in which he worked for most of his life. South Africa was receptive to ideas that would not challenge the racial categories that reinforced perceptions of power and difference -- from the past as well as the present. But it needed the individual whose personality, interests and influences could deliver this.

The primary emphasis of Dubow's study was "the role of ideology in the creation and maintenance of white supremacy during the inter-war years" in South Africa.104 He is therefore defining the context, and arguing for an effect of, some of Dart's work, but explores only part of the explanation for it. Dubow's conclusions are broadly true but not a complete explanation. Dart was a physical anthropologist working after the Great War. In this period the discipline was grounded in a belief in racial typology, as a classificatory system and a practical approach to interpreting study materials: "the underlying premises of inter-war physical anthropology took notions of innate racial difference for granted."105 This continued world wide, alongside a widespread scientific enthusiasm for eugenics, until the rise of Nazism encouraged scientists to re-examine and abandon these approaches. Operating in the relative intellectual isolation of Johannesburg from 1923, Dart may have lagged behind some of the challenges and changes to the established approaches in physical anthropology, but he had not been responsible for creating them.

"Scientific racism" is not inevitably associated with practical racial discrimination. Dart though never actively political is credited with opening the Wits Medical School to non-white students, and with criticising discriminatory policies.106

-- Science Has Always Been Inseparable from Politics: Scientific research doesn’t take place in a vacuum; it can only happen with society’s blessing, by Ubadah Sabbagh

Early in his South African years he stated publicly there was no justification in biology for intolerance on racial grounds.107

[C-SPAN 2: Global Climate Change. Senate Foreign Relations Committee]

[Jeff] Here’s Al Gore earning his keep by pretending to care
about the rain forest, while lobbying Congress

on behalf of the sugar cane ethanol industry.

[Senator Christopher Dodd, D-Connecticut] Let me come in on the Brazilian effort here,
with the issue of the possibility of expanding into
that Amazon River basin, with further deforestation,

to produce more ethanol out of sugar cane, is a worry.
And apparently, you’re not as concerned about that.


[Al Gore, Alliance for Climate Protection, Founder & Chairman] No, no, I am. I simply forgot.


[Motor Roaring]


[Children screaming & crying]


[Al Gore, Alliance for Climate Protection, Founder & Chairman] What’s been going on there, it is really very troubling.


[Indigenous Woman] We are human beings!


[Indigenous Woman] Humans! All we want is to survive!


[Newsman] The invasion of sugar cane monocultures

in the region clashes with the indigenous people’s right to land.
These are images of a last ditch attempt,

by the Guarani-Kaiowa, to resist eviction.
[December 15, 2005]

[Al Gore, Alliance for Climate Protection, Founder & Chairman] It’s important to note that the exploitation

of the sugar cane growing areas in Brazil does not have

to inevitably have the knock-on consequence
of causing destruction in the Amazon.


[Newsman] Sugar cane fields are burning.
They’re set alight before the harvest,

to eliminate the leaves and tops of the plant,
which makes cutting more efficient.
[Somber music]

Environmentalists blame the seemingly
endless sugar cane fields for air and water pollution

on an epic scale.
And along with deforestation, the threat it poses
to the environment is becoming clear.
[Dramatic music]
[December 15, 2005]
Once the indigenous families were expelled,

the land owners set their homes on fire.

[Dramatic music]

-- Planet of the Humans, written, produced and directed by Jeff Gibbs

It happened that, for white South Africa, a racial typology model reinforced assumptions, political needs and economic structures in the interwar years. Then, following the National Party victory in 1948 and the gradual definition of the apartheid system, ideas of racial typology hardened in South Africa as they were being dissolved in science, but Dart was neither involved in nor responsible for those trends. Academics cannot take all the blame for the misuse of their ideas.

The osteodontokeratic became a matter of faith for Dart's followers, who could see signs of human usage by looking at the materials, much as "eolith" stone tools from the Pliocene had been supported in Europe and elsewhere. It was an interesting hypothesis and it had deeper impact, for it led to the popular image of man's nature as the killer ape, popularized in writings such as Robert Ardrey's African Genesis.

America's most distinguished university presidents...by warmly receiving Nazi diplomats and propagandists on campus, they helped Nazi Germany present itself to the American public as a civilized nation, unfairly maligned in the press. Influenced by their administrators' example, and that of many of their professors, college and university students for the most part adopted a similar outlook...

The Harvard University administration during the 1930s, led by President James Bryant Conant, ignored numerous opportunities to take a principled stand against the Hitler regime and its antisemitic outrages and contributed to Nazi Germany's efforts to improve its image in the West. Its lack of concern about Nazi antisemitism was shared by many influential Harvard alumni and student leaders. In warmly welcoming Nazi leaders to the Harvard campus; inviting them to prestigious, high-profile social events; and striving to build friendly relations with thoroughly Nazified universities in Germany, while denouncing those who protested against these actions, Harvard's administration and many of its student leaders offered important encouragement to the Hitler regime as it intensified its persecution of Jews and expanded its military strength....

Princeton's student newspaper contemptuously dismissed what it called "the almost ridiculous protests of those favoring an Olympic boycott." The Daily Princetonian declared in an editorial that advocates of a boycott made any "true sportsman or true American righteously ashamed that the United States" included in its population individuals so "narrow and selfish." Their arguments against participation in the Berlin games were "as groundless as they are warped." Just as Presidents Conant, Angell, and Butler had claimed that Nazi policies should not influence relationships among academics, the Daily Princetonian editors insisted that "[a]thletics have nothing to do with politics or race..."

It is truly shameful that the administrative, alumni, and student leaders of America's most prominent university, who were in a position to influence American opinion at a critical time, remained indifferent to Germany's terrorist campaign against the Jews and instead on many occasions assisted the Nazis in their efforts to gain acceptance in the West...

Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, Columbia's president from 1902 to 1945, failed on numerous occasions to take a principled stand against barbarism. As president of the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, and head of one of the nation's leading universities, Butler was more widely known to the public than any leader of American higher education during the 1930s. Long prominent in Republican politics and a candidate for that party's presidential nomination in 1920, he often traveled to conferences abroad and met with world leaders. The media gave his comments on international affairs considerable attention. He was therefore in a position to exert significant influence in shaping American views of Nazi Germany...

Despite the Nazis' reactionary policies on women and curtailment of their access to a university education, many administrators, faculty, and students at the elite women's colleges known as the Seven Sisters -- Vassar, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Radcliffe, and Barnard -- shared a sanguine view of Nazi Germany and enthusiastically participated in academic and cultural exchanges with the Third Reich. Such attitudes and behavior were widespread in America's colleges and universities during the 1930s, but the Seven Sisters were particularly influential in shaping American views of the Hitler regime because they were among the most active participants in student exchange programs in Germany...

Impressionable students were also often influenced by American lecturers who presented a largely favorable view of the Hitler regime during its early years. At Wellesley, for example, Dr. Robert C. Dexter, formerly head of the Brown University Sociology Department and a director of the League of Nations Association, lectured in November 1933 on the "excellent time he [had] enjoyed" in Nazi Germany the previous summer. Dr. Dexter told the students that it was no wonder that the German people backed Hitler, because France was using its superior armaments to build a "wall of steel" around them. The German people were also reacting to the corruption of the Republican governments in the Weimar period. Dexter denounced the press reports of Jewish persecution as "grossly exaggerated" and claimed "that while he was in Germany he had not seen one instance of outright violence." Although he did not approve of the complete exclusion of Jews from civil offices, he explained that there were "extenuating circumstances": the Jews had "held a disproportionate amount of the country's wealth and ... professional positions." Dexter emphasized that it was most important not to interfere in Germany's internal affairs. The "worst enemies of the German Jew," he pontificated, were not the Nazis, but "the Jews of other countries who are spreading untrue propaganda." This might lead resentful Germans to lash out at Jews to defend their country's honor.

Seven Sisters colleges sponsored social events to promote German-American friendship. Wellesley College arranged a dance and reception for German naval cadets from the battle cruiser Karlsruhe when it visited Boston harbor in May 1934 flying the swastika flag on its goodwill tour around the world for the Nazi government. Ignoring the Boston Jewish community's protests against the German warship's visit, Wellesley invited the cadets to campus for a dance. Boston rabbi Samuel Abrams denounced the Karlsruhe as an instrument of "hate and darkness." By contrast, the Wellesley College News portrayed the cadets as very appealing young blond men "immaculate in flawless black uniforms," whose "friendly grins" made them appear "soft and sincere." Soon after the cadets' arrival, "the floor was filled with dancing couples." Everyone enjoyed the punch and cookies...

Students and faculty at the Seven Sisters expressing admiration for the "New Germany" influenced many college youth toward greater sympathy for the Hitler regime. In May 1934, Radcliffe's Debating Council sponsored a debate between the Radcliffe and Brown University teams on whether "Hitlerism is the best thing for Germany." Presenting the affirmative, "the gentlemen from Brown" argued that Hitler had rescued Germany from anarchy and forestalled a Communist takeover. He had ended an ineffective Reichstag's "feudalistic wrangling," stimulated economic recovery, and "restored unity, morale, and self-respect" to a nation exploited by vindictive Allied powers. Hitler's foreign policy did not present a menace to peace....

The revisionist historians of the origins of the World War convinced many Americans that either the Allies themselves were primarily to blame for starting the conflict, or that all belligerents were equally to blame. Revisionist arguments appealed to much of the American public as they became increasingly isolationist during the 1920s and resentful of their nation's allies for failing to repay wartime loans. The United States had refused to ratify the Versailles Treaty and would not join its wartime allies in the League of Nations. [2] Many Americans during the interwar period, convinced by revisionist historians that vindictive Allies had imposed unnecessarily harsh conditions and reparations at Versailles on a Germany no more guilty of initiating hostilities than they were, sympathized with Hitler's determination to restore Germany's military strength and lost territories. They credited Hitler with restoring confidence and honor to a prostrated and seemingly unfairly stigmatized nation. By repeatedly disparaging Allied wartime propaganda about German military abuse of civilians, the revisionist scholars, and those who popularized their arguments in the mass media, convinced many Americans that reports of Nazi persecution of Jews were greatly exaggerated or even false....

Besides influencing their students in the German clubs to adopt a favorable attitude toward Nazism, some prominent professors of German also served as propagandists for the Third Reich in other forums, including Friedrich Auhagen and Frederick K. Krueger, prominent participants in the University of Virginia Institute of Public Affairs roundtables, and Professor Paul H. Curts of the Wesleyan University German Department. In October 1934, Curts explained to a student assembly at Wesleyan that only Hitler could provide Germany with what it needed. Having witnessed the Night of the Long Knives from Hamburg, Germany, Curts reported that most Germans had no objection to "the quick blow of retaliation that the leader made" against what they considered "a radical conspiracy." 23 Speaking at New Haven's Exchange Club about two weeks later as someone who had vacationed several times in the Third Reich, Curts accused the American press of publishing exaggerated accounts of disorder there. Curts declared that the Nazis had no intention of spreading their doctrine outside Germany...

The Bergel-Hauptmann case illuminates the extent of support for Nazism by German Department faculty and students in American universities during the 1930s, and the widespread unconcern about it among university trustees, who were often highly influential business leaders. Members of NJC's German faculty, including its chair, did not hesitate to make their enthusiasm for Hitler's Germany known in public forums, and there is considerable evidence that they spoke favorably about it to their students on many occasions in class. The German Department placed impressionable students in an environment in which they were very susceptible to being influenced by pro-Hitler propaganda. It required its majors to reside for at least a year in the German House, under the supervision of an ardent Nazi faculty member. Nationally prominent Jewish leader Samuel Untermyer asked New Jersey's governor for a legislative investigation of the NJC German Department, which he called "a hotbed of Nazi sedition."...

In an April 1936 article published in a Jewish magazine, Lienhard Bergel explained that Nazi faculty in the NJC German Department made special arrangements for the students traveling to Germany for study to maximize their chances of being influenced by Nazi ideology. One of the aziNJC professors would personally select a German host family for the student to reside with when abroad that was particularly committed to Nazism. The professor justified his or her personal involvement in the placement by explaining that it was for the purpose of making sure that the student was exposed to a "genuinely German atmosphere."

-- The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower: Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses, by Stephen H. Norwood

[admin]

Part 3 of 3

In the apartheid era, Dart's followers could comfortably distance themselves from the most extreme racial paradigms and Dart could concentrate on different topics such as the osteodontokeratic.

-- A List Of Fallacious Arguments, by Don Lindsay

Dart's enthusiasm for exotic origins and links in the past of the African continent, especially his challenge to the African origins of Great Zimbabwe, reinforced white prejudices and was echoed in Southern African white communities well into the 1970s. Isolated from European culture at the furthest end of a vast continent, historical links to ancient Mediterranean civilizations were immensely reassuring. But his early major claim for Australopithecus demonstrated the African origins of mankind. This was not just a challenge to those who saw Asian origins from the finds of Homo erectus (Pithecanthropus), but also the priority for Europe implied by the find of Piltdown Man from England, only exposed as a fake in 1953.

Further, Dart's actual studies of humans -- from skeletal remains or living individuals -- struggled to fit real evidence into the distinct racial typology, leading constantly to explanations of hybridity, as we have shown above. His own empirical research chipped away at the validity of distinct racial classifications, although he was loath to admit it.

The local acceptance in South Africa of Dart's views may also reflect the nature of "colonial science." In the early twentieth century, Britain's dominions (and not least Australia and South Africa) were anxious to demonstrate that they could be contributors to scientific research, not just consumers of it from London.108 Students would still go from Australia, South Africa or elsewhere to the metropolitan heartland to acquire research training, but the young academic institutions of the dominions needed to demonstrate their strengths. The Australian Dart helped put South African science on the world map, and scientific achievement on the Southern African map.109 White South Africa in the 1920s and 1930s was a fetnile ground for someone willing to give the region a new role and status in world science, and the Taung find showed South Africa could house scientific research of world importance.

In 1925 Jan Smuts, Prime Minister until the previous year, specifically selected for praise the role of human palaeontology in South Africa.110 Dart's discovery led to his immediate rise in status. Already a full professor at 29, he was made Dean of the Medical School within months of his discovery, and other honors followed and continued for the subsequent decades. In time Dart's status grew such that public criticism by others in the field was muted and indirect; in his later decades of work scientists were unwilling to say in print what they thought in private. In exploring Dart' s relations with other scientists, full use has yet to be made of the Dart papers at the University of the Witwatersrand.111

The disadvantage of such a pioneering role is of course isolation. The opportunities to test ideas among colleagues in the same disciplinary areas were few, though colleagues in other disciplines were encouraging. But what led an Australian with medical training, placed in an isolated and under-resourced teaching position in South Africa, to play such an iconoclastic role and across so many fields and topics?

We must look in part to his personality to explain his approach to the fields of archaeology and physical anthropology. Having rebelled at university against his parents' fundamentalist religious beliefs, he continued to be a rebel (though some might suggested he endorsed a new fundamentalism).

In his co-authored autobiography Dart wrote:

I may be asked how it is possible in following the feckless hobby of an amateur detective to know where the trail will lead or what will prove the most valuable clue in the solution of human mysteries? Usually what helped me most was the general agreement of a lot of other people that I was on the wrong track! Knowing the fallibility of human opinion, especially popular opinions or dogmas adopted without satisfactory reasons, it generally proved valuable to explore the reverse of the accepted view.112

An element here might be the brashness of the outsider to a world of science dominated by metropolitan Europe: the independent Australian character. Sir Arthur Keith would criticize Dart for "his flightiness, his scorn for accepted opinion, the unorthodoxy of his outlook."113 More politely, Tobias describes "his tendency to overstate the case'" alongside "his willingness to free his mind from the shackles of authority ... a man rich in idiosyncrasies, a born actor with overwhelming charisma."114 But what began as a radical approach to issues in prehistory would be seen as adherence to discredited ideas: instead of looking forward to new but untested ideas, looking backward to discredited ones.

Part of the explanation for Dart's approach is the baleful influence of Sir Grafton Elliot Smith (1871 - 1937), to whom Dart attributed his interest in anthropology. Elliot Smith's excursions from his professional field of anatomy into the more exotic fields of archaeology marked him as a major "hyper-diffusionist" (in Glyn Daniel's account of this direction of argument). He put especial emphasis on the role of Pharaonic Egypt in the generation of world cultural trends; the view that civilization was not independently acquired but spread from a single source. In Daniel's analysis115 Elliot Smith, the research scientist in anatomy, "abandoned any pretence at scientific method ... his theory was formed and everything was squeezed into this theory." Daniel continues, "Why does the world tolerate this academic rubbish ... ? First these is a deep-seated desire for a simple answer to complicated problems."

In an article after his retirement Dart acknowledged how when he first encountered Smith: "he was now through his discoveries in Egypt revolutionizing our knowledge of how culture had spread throughout the world."116 Tellingly. he notes that Elliot Smith bequeathed his library to Raymond Dart: they would form part of the University of Witwatersrand Library.

If Elliot Smith was a major influence on Dart seeking to create a reputation in anthropology and archaeology, Phillip Tobias was a major influence on maintaining that reputation through and beyond the last decades of Dart's life. Because of the high regard in which Tobias has been held -- and continues to be held -- his championing and defence of the Dart reputation has had real impact. Tobias was Dart's protege and choice as his successor as professor of anatomy; he too became dean of the Witwatersrand Medical School. Tobias remains one of the "greats" in modern palaeoanthropology and physical anthropology, and his reputation has been further extended by his principled political and social stand during the apartheid years of South Africa, starting with his elected role as president of the progressive National Union of South African Students immediately after the election of the white Nationalist government. Not many fossil-hunters have been a significant student political leader as well as director of a major medical school! Tobias' work, as South Africa's leading physical anthropologist, actually contributed indirectly to undoing many of Dart's ideas especially on racial classification117 but Tobias remained a strong public champion of his mentor and "father-figure." Tributes by Tobias to Dart include a major accolade and an obituary where, acknowledging that Dart's osteodontokeratic hypothesis had been largely rejected, he credited him nonetheless with creating the discipline of taphonomy as a result.118

Finally some of Dart's continuing influence must be attributed to his personal charm and charisma alongside the awe in which he was held, although many early students may have "dismissed him as him 'mad' ..."119 As a source of encouragement, resources and institutional support Dart built and maintained a large circle of proteges and admirers, not always to the liking of the newer generation of professionals.

The Nature of Scientific Advance

Much of this story demonstrates the sometimes tenuous link between hypothesis and proof. Scientific method is ideally derived from the generation of hypotheses and their subsequent testing. But the testing, the replicability, varies between different sciences. In archaeology some hypotheses are readily testable, because the database is large, but other hypotheses lack multiple sources of evidence. Thus Dart could generate an extreme hypothesis, but if the sources for testing were limited (a sole Australopithecus site, the Great Zimbabwe ruins, the iron working in the sites of Zambia) it could remain neither validated nor invalidated for some time.

While Dart's publications included solid descriptive material in anatomy, physical anthropology and archaeology, this paper argues that his interpretative themes -- most pursued doggedly throughout his life -- represented a less than scientific approach. One of these themes -- the identification and position of Australopithecus africanus -- has been accepted as a contribution to science while the others have been left behind. We have attempted to explain the framework in which a promising anatomist took and maintained such a path, but the narrative raises a number of questions about the nature of scientific enquiry in archaeology and palaeoanthropology.

One simple view is that all ideas have their time and then pass in the light of revised and better supported views, and we should not judge the approaches of the past by the standards of the present. But this does not really apply: at the time that Dart advanced many of his wilder views, in the interwar decades and immediately after, prehistoric sciences were already established and growing in strength. Dart's views and lines of argument were leading in quite opposite directions, which he developed and adhered to for over five decades.

A harsher view is that if one throws out large numbers of improbable hypotheses at least one of them (in this case the evolutionary position of Australopithecus) may turn out to be confirmed. In this light it is fortunate that the claim was one of Dart's earliest publications in the field, but in fact it was not accepted outside South Africa for more than a decade by which time his other themes had already entered the literature. While the methodology and many of the conclusions in Dart's writing must be challenged, it is not impossible that a second of his many adventurous hypotheses might in time be seen as an inspired guess matching a newly accepted argument.

Physical anthropology and archaeology are not for the most part experimental sciences. However for much of their scope they are testable by the expectation of replication, of recovering larger samples. The rarer the material, least replicable the samples, the easier it is to generate dramatic hypotheses which are not readily refutable, and which bypass the desideratum of a scientific hypothesis, that it should be structured so as to be readily nullifiable by scientific method. Even recently interpretations of population movements from (and at times into) the African continent have conveniently ignored geographical limitations and boundaries and the principle of Occam's Razor, to support complex explanatory models.120

We have referred to the distance drawn by Glyn Daniel between scientific archaeology and "the lunatic fringe" as if there is a clear line applicable at all times. This approach is reflected in a recent collection of essays edited by G. Garrett Fagan121 on ''pseudoarchaeology'' in which Daniel's professorial successor Colin Renfrew takes a similarly unambivalent line. "There are problems with such a simple approach.122 Though largely accepting the divide of science from pseudoscience Garrett Fagan 121 does concede "pseudoarchaeology is not therefore restricted to maverick, unprofessional writers with very strange ideas about antiquity. It is a trap that can ensnare professionally trained academics when their egos, ideologies, or other personal beliefs get in the way of their commitment to open enquiry." He identifies pseudoarchaeology as characterized by a number of attitudes: "Dogged adherence to outdated theoretical models; disparaging academia; appeal to academic authority; huge claims; selective and/or distorted presentation; the kitchen-sink mode of argument [weight of selected data]; vague definitions; superficiality, sloppiness and grossness of comparison; obsession with esoteric; a farrago of failings; expectation of a reward at quest's end."

This seems too simplistic and pious a division between good and bad, science and pseudo-science, us and them. There are many examples in which the rational and the irrational coexist. We are frequently reminded how Isaac Newton was an enthusiast for astrology while laying the basis for scientific physics; that while Conan Doyle defined the epitomy of rationality and logic in his detective novels his greatest passion was for the spiritualist movement; and in seeing how many contemporary leaders of scientific research attest to an unwavering fundamental religious faith coexisting with their research methodology.

There is only one subject matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations…You cannot shelter theology from science, or science from theology…we should aim at the integration of science and religion, and turn the impoverishing opposition between the two into an enriching contrast…[If the condition of mutual tolerance is satisfied, then] a clash of doctrines is not a disaster—it is an opportunity…The clash is a sign that there are wider truths and finer perspectives within which a reconciliation of a deeper religion and a more subtle science will be found…our existence is more than a succession of bare facts... Self-realization is the ultimate fact of facts.”

-- Alfred North Whitehead, by Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Dart was a distinguished (if at times eccentric) teacher. His descriptive anatomy appears robust, though not free from criticism, given the failure to secure publication of his descriptive work on the Taung child. 124 He could have maintained a career involving contributions restricted to formal anatomy. But he chose to dip into unfamiliar worlds of archaeology with his extreme hyper-diffusionist ideas and untestable hypotheses, and also to follow paths of interpretation in physical anthropology that stretched credibility. Without Taung, if these had been his major outputs, he might have developed a quite different reputation. If he had then at a later stage of his career made a claim that the undated Taung skull represented a new genus and family ancestral to man, he would have been greeted with even greater skepticism. As it was, this early claim was the one that gained local and eventually wider scientific acceptance and established a reputation, which allowed his other ideas to be proselytized.

In the division of scientific from non-scientific method, one may argue that the "discovery" of Australopithecus was not methodologically a scientific discovery but a fortunate stumbling on the truth. It is good to remember scholars for their lasting contribution to our knowledge, but we need to be aware that the process of creating that knowledge is not always clear, clean, and, methodologically sound.

_______________

Notes:

1. I am grateful for advice and assistance to Graham Connah, Darren Curnoe, Donald Denoon, Saul Dubow, Brian Fagan, Neil Parsons, and not least to Revil Mason for having introduced me to some of the players in this drama. However, none of these are implicated in my conclusions.

2. A. Keith, “The Taungs Skull,” Nature 116 (1925), 11.

3. A detailed, but uncritical and hagiographical, narrative biography of Dart was published as F. Wheelhouse and K.S. Smithford, [i[Dart: Scientist and Man of Grit[/i] (Sydney: Transpareon Press, 2001), complementing Dart’s own memoir, R.A. Dart and D. Craig, Adventures with the Missing Link (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1959), and other sources (P.V. Tobias, Dart, Taung and the Missing Link (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1984). Critical assessment in print of Dart’s career is limited: an important article published thirteen years ago by Saul Dubow (“Human Origins, Race Typology and the Other Raymond Dart,” African Studies 55 [1006], 1-30), and briefer mention in a book by the same author (S. Dubow, Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995]).

4. Wheelhouse and Smithford, Dart.

5. G. Elliot Smith, The Ancient Egyptians and the Origin of Civilization (London and New York: Harper, 1911); G. Daniel, The Idea of Prehistory (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1964).

6. R.A. Dart, “The South African Negro,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 13 (1929), 309-18, 315.

7. Wheelhouse and Smithford, Dart, 48.

8. Ibid., 58.

9. R.A. Dart, “Associations With and Impressions of Sir Grafton Elliot Smith,” Mankind 8 (1972), 171-75.

10. Wheelhouse and Smithford, Dart, 331-43; M. Dart, “Raymond A. Dart – List of Publications 1920-1967,” South African Journal of Science 64 (1968), 134-40; I. Fischer, Professor Raymond Arthur Dart: A Bibliography of His Works (Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Department of Bibliography, Librarianship, and Typography 9cyclostyled], 1969).

11. R.A. Dart, “Boskop Remains from the South-East African Coast,” Nature 112 (1923), 623-25.

12. Tobias Dart, Taung, 16-34, correcting some errors by Dart and Craig, Adventures.

13. Tobias, Dart, Taung, 37.

14. R.A. Dart, “Australopithecus Africanus: The Man-Ape of South Africa,” Nature 115, 2884 (1925), 195-99 (reprinted in South African Journal of Science 64 [1968], 51-57).

15. S. Zuckerman, From Apes to Warlords (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978), 15, 45.

16. Tobias, Dart, Taung, 38-39.

17. Dart and Craig, Adventures, 50-51.

18. R.A. Dart, “The Status of Australopithecus,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 26 (1940), 167-86.

19. M. Morwood and P. van Oosterzee, The Discovery of the Hobbit (Sydney: Random House, 2007), 111, 118, 122, 182-87, 229.

20. P. Brown, T. Sutkina, M.J. Morwood, R.P. Soejono, Jatmiko, E. Wayhu Saptomo, and Rokus Awe Due, “A New Small-Bodied Hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia,” Nature 431 (2004), 1055-61; M.J. Morwood, R.P. Soejono, R.G. Roberts, T. Sutikna, C.S.M. Turney, K.E. Westaway, W.J. Rink, J.-X Zhao, G.D. van den Bergh, Rokus Awe Due, D.R. Hobbs, M.W. Moore, M.I. Bird, and L.K. Fifield, “Archaeology and Age of a New Hominin from Flores in Eastern Indonesia,” Nature 431 (2004), 1087-91.

21. A. Keith, G. Elliot Smith, A.S. Woodward, and W.L.H. Duckworth, “The Fossil Anthropoid Ape from Taungs,” Nature 115 (1925), 234-36.

22. Keith, “The Taungs Skull,” 11.

23. P.V. Tobias, “Piltdown: An Appraisal of the Case against Sir Arthur Keith,” Current Anthropology 33 (1992), 243-93.

24. Dart and Craig, Adventures, 64.

25. A. Keith, “Australopithecenae or Dartians,” Nature 159 (1947), 377.

26. R.A. Dart, “A Note on Makapansgat: A Site of Early Human Occupation,” South African Journal of Science 22 (1925), 454.

27. R. Derricourt, “Patenting Hominins: Taxonomies, Fossils and Egos,” Critique of Anthropology 29 (2009), 193-204.

28. P. Tobias, Into the Past: A Memoir (Johannesburg: Picador Africa, 2005), 218.

29. R.A. Dart, “The Makapansgat Proto-Human Australopithecus Prometheus,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 6 (1948), 259-83, 275.

30. B. Wood, “An Interview with Phillip Tobias,” Current Anthropology 30 (1989), 215-24, 216.

31. S. James, “Hominid Use of Fire in the Lower and Middle Pleistocene: A Review of the Evidence,” Current Anthropology 30 (1989), 1-26.

32. Dart and Craig, Adventures, 157-58.

33. Wood, “An Interview,” 215-16.

34. R.A. Dart, The Osteodontokeratic Culture of Australopithecus Prometheus (Pretoria: Transvaal Museum Memoir 7, 1957).

35. R.A. Dart, “Further Light on Australopithecine Humeral and Femoral Weapons,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 17 (1959), 87-94.

36. R.A. Dart, “From Cannon-Bone Scoops to Skull Bowls at Makapansgat,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 20 (1962), 287-95.

37. Dart and Craig, Adventures, 114, 201.

38. R. Ardrey, African Genesis, (New York: Atheneum, 1961).

39. R.K. Brain, The Hunters or the Hunted? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981): D.L. Wolberg, “The Hypothesized Osteodontokeratic Culture of the Autralopithecines,” Current Anthropology 11 (1970), 23-37; P. Shipman and J.E. Phillips, “On Scavenging by Hominids and Other Carnivores,” Current Anthropology 17 (1976), 170-72.

40. Dart, “Boskop Remains.”

41. Ibid.; Wheelhouse and Smithford, Dart, 57.

42. R.A. Dart, “Recent Discoveries Bearing on Human History in Southern Africa,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 70 (1940), 13-27.

43. R. Singer, “The Boskop ‘Race’ Problem,” Man 58 (1958), 173078. The trend at times remains; see R. Derricourt, “Getting ‘Out of Africa’: Sea Crossings, Land Crossings and Culture in the Hominin Migrations,” Journal of World Prehistory 19 (2005), 119-132.

44. R.A. Dart, “The First Human Mandible from the Dave of Hearths, Makapansgat,” South African Archaeological Bulletin 3 (1948), 98.

45. Dubow, Scientific Racism, 56-58; Dubow, “Human Origins.”

46. Dubow, “Human Origins.”

47. Ibid., 32.

48. M. Wilson, The Thousand Years before Van Riebeeck, Sixth Raymond Dart Lecture (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1970); R.M. Derricourt, “Classification and Culture Change in Late Post-Pleistocene South Africa,” in C. Renfrew, ed., The Explanation of Culture Change: Models in Prehistory (London, Duckworth, 1973), 625-31.

49. R.A. Dart and N. del Grande, “The Ancient Iron-Smelting Cavern at Mumbwa,” Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 19 (1931), 379-427, 421.

50. R.A. Dart, “Three Strandlopers from the Kaokaoveld Coast,” South African Journal of Science 51 (1955), 175-79.

51. Dart, “Recent Discoveries,” 22.

52. R.A. Dart, “Racial Origins,” in I. Schapera, ed., Bantu-Speaking Tribes of South Africa: An Ethnographic Survey (London: Routledge and Cape Town: Maskew Miller, 1937), 1-37.

53. Ibid., 22.

54. P.V. Tobias, “The Biology of the Southern African Negro,” in W.D. Hammond-Tooke, ed., The Bantu-Speaking Peoples of Southern Africa (London: Routledge, 1974), 3-45, 11.

55. Dart and Craig, Adventures, 71-72; Wheelhouse and Smithford, Dart, 184-85; see also Dubow, “Human Origins,” 16-19.

56. R.A. Dart, “A Hottentot from Hong Kong: Pre-Bantu Population Exchanges between Africa and Asia,” South African Journal of Medical Science 17 (1952), 117-42, 125-26.

57. R.A. Dart, “The Historical Succession of Cultural Impacts upon South Africa,” Nature 115 (1925), 425-29.

58. M. Burkitt, South Africa’s Past in Stone and Paint (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928).

59. A.J.H. Goodwin and C. van Riet Lowe, The Stone Age Cultures of South Africa, Annals of the South African Museum 27 (Cape Town: South African Museum, 1929).

60. R.M. Derricourt, Prehistoric Man in the Ciskei and Transkei (Cape Town, Struik, 1977).

61. Dart and del Grande, “Ancient Iron Smelting,” 403.

62. R.A. Dart, “Phallic Objects in Southern Africa,” South African Journal of Science 26 (1929), 553-62; R.A. Dart, “A Chinese Character as a Wall Motive in Rhodesia,” South African Journal of Science 36 (1939), 74-75; R.A. Dart, “The Ritual Employment of Bored Stones by Transvaal Bantu Tribes,” South African Archaeological Bulletin 3 (1948), 61-66.

63. R.A. Dart, “Rhodesian Engravers, Painters and Pigment Miners of the Fifth Millennium,” South African Archaeological Bulletin 8 (1953), 91-96, 94.

64. R.A. Dart, “Further Data on the Origin and Phallic Character of Conical and Perfrated Stones,” South African Journal of Science 29 (1932), 731-41, 737.

65. R.A. Dart, “Paintings that Link South with North Africa,” South African Archaeological Bulletin 18 (1963), 29-30.

66 Dart, “Historical Succession,” 426.

67. Dart, “A Chinese Character.”

68. M. Hall, “’Hidden History’: Iron Age Archaeology in Southern Africa,” in P. Robertshaw, ed., A History of African Archaeology (London: James Currey; and Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 1990), 59-63.

69. Dubow, “Human Origins,” 99.

70. G. Caton Thompson, Mixed Memoirs (Gateshead: The Paradigm Press, 1983), 130-36.

71. Dart and Craig, Adventures, 68-71.

72. Wheelhouse and Smithford, Dart, 118.

73. Ibid., 203.

74. R.A. Dart, “A Polished Stone Pendant from Makapansgat Valley,” South African Archaeological Bulletin 4 (1949), 83-86.

75. Dart, “Rhodesian Engravers.”

76. Dart, “South African Negro,” 315.

77. Wheelhouse and Smithford, Dart, 229.

78. R.A. Dart, African Serological Patterns and Human Migratoins (Claremont: South African Archaeological Society, 1951).

79. Dart, “Hottentot from Hong Kong.”

80. Ibid., 136.

81. Ibid., 137-38.

82. R.A. Dart, “Death Ships in South West Africa and South-East Asia,” South African Archaeological Bulletin 17 (1962), 231-33.

83. Dart, “Historical Succession”; Dart and Craig, Adventures, 74.

84. F.A. Chami, “Diffusion in the Studies of the African Past: Reflections from New Archaeological Findings,” African Archaeological Review 24 (2007), 1-14.

85. R.A. Dart, “Nickel in Ancient Bronzes,” Nature 113 (1924), 888.

86. R.A. Dart, “The Bronze Age in Southern Africa,” Nature 123 (1929), 495-96.

87. Dart and del Grande, “Ancient Iron Smelting.”

88. Wheelhouse and Smithford, Dart, 145.

89. Dart and del Grande, “Ancient Iron Smelting,” 419.

90. Dart and del Grande, “Ancient Iron Smelting,” 382.

91. Wheelhouse an dSmithford, Dart, 188.

92. R. Derricourt, Man on the Kafue: the Archaeology and History of the Itezhitezhi area of Zambia (London: Ethnographica, and New York: Lilian Barber Press, 1985), 239-47.

93. R.A. Dart, “The Discovery of a Stone Age Manganese Mine at Chowa, Northern Rhodesia,” Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 22 (1934), 55-70.

94. Dart and del Grande, “Ancient Iron Smelting,” 400, 423.

95. R.A. Dart, “The Birth of Symbology,” African Studies 27 (1968), 15-27.

96. Wheelhouse and Smithford, [i]Dart, 189-91.

97. Wheelhouse and Smithford, Dart, 266-70.

98. R.A. Dart, “The Antiquity of Mining in Southern Africa,” South African Journal of Science 63 (1967), 264-67; R.A. Dart and P. Beaumont, “Amazing Antiquity of Mining in Southern Africa,” Nature 216 (1967), 407-408; R.A. Dart and P. Beaumont, “Evidence of Iron Age Mining in Southern Africa in the Middle Stone Age,” Current Anthropology 10 (1969), 127-28; R.A. Dart and P. Beaumont, “On a Further Radiocarbon Date for Ancient Mining in Southern Africa,” South African Journal of Science 67 (1971), 10-11.

99. Dart and Beaumont, “Amazing Antiquity.”

100. R.A. Dart and P.B. Beaumont, “Iron Age Radiocarbon Dates from Western Swaziland,” South African Archaeological Bulletin 24 (1969), 71.

101. Wheelhouse and Smithford, Dart.

102. Tobias, Dart, Taung.

103. Dubow, Scientific Racism; Dubow, “Human Origins.” See G. Strkalj, “Where was Raymond Dart Wrong?” African Studies 57, 1 (1998), 107-111 for a critique of Dubow.

104. Dubow, Scientific Racism, 1995, ix.

105. Ibid., 287.

106. Tobias, Dart, Taung: 14; Dubow, Scientific Racism, 1995; 45-46; Dubow, “Human Origins,” 11-12; F. Wheelhouse, Raymond Arthur Dart: A Pictorial Profile, Professor Dart’s Discovery of “The Missing Link” (Sydney: Transpareon Press, 1983), 18.

107. Dart, “Note on Makapansgat,” 79.

108. S. Dubow, A Commonwealth of Knowledge: Science, Sensibility and White South Africa 1820-2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

109. Dubow, “Human Origins,” 6-7.

110. Dubow, Commonwealth of Knowledge, 207.

111. G. Strkalj, “Review of Dart: Scientist and Man of Grit,” PaleoAnthropology 1 (2003), 35-36.

112. Dart and Craig, Adventures, 241-42.

113. Quoted in Dart and Craig, Adventures, 31.

114. Tobias, Into the Past, 216-7.

115. Daniel, Idea of Prehistory, 88-107.

116. Dart, “Associations.”

117. Tobias, Into the Past, 68.

118. P.V. Tobias, “Homage to Emeritus Professor R.A. Dart on his 75th Birthday.” South African Journal of Science 64 (1968), 52-50; P.V. Tobias, “Raymond Arthur Dart (1893-1988),” Nature 337 (1989), 211.

119. Tobias, Into the Past, 24.

120. Derricourt, “Getting ‘Out of Africa.’”

121. G.G. Fagan, Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public (New York: Routledge, 2006).

122. W. Stoczkowski, “Review of Fagan: Archaeological Fantasies,” Antiquity 81 (2007), 472-73.

123. Fagan, Archaeological Fantasies, 29.

125. Wheelhouse and Smithford, Dart, 176-77.
 

[admin]

Science Has Always Been Inseparable from Politics: Scientific research doesn’t take place in a vacuum; it can only happen with society’s blessing
by Ubadah Sabbagh
Scientific America
April 25, 2017

Even now, on the heels of the March for Science, we see some scientists hesitate to acknowledge the fact that science is political. Why wouldn’t they? We hold it up as the golden standard of objectivity, and synonymize it with words like ‘unbiased’ and ‘rational’, divorcing it from our human capriciousness. It’s quite natural to associate those notions with science. After all, you’d be hard pressed to find a more objective way of discovering the true nature of nature than by utilizing the power of the scientific method. But there’s an important distinction to be made between science and the scientific method.

We use the scientific method to minimize bias and maximize objectivity. That is what’s rational and unbiased. The scientific enterprise, however, is not, and it’s nothing short of clinging to a fanciful myth to suggest that it ever was.

The reality is that engaging in scientific research is a social activity and an inherently political one. Imagine for a moment that you were going to start a new country today. There are things you’d be compelled to do by default; coming up with laws, for example. Funding science is not a default position when creating a country, it’s a decision we made once as a society, and continue to revisit as we make new policies and pass budgets. Science has been linked to the politics of society since the first person thought it was a good idea to do research, and then convinced their neighbors to give them money to do it.

Scientific research doesn’t take place in a vacuum, it can only happen with society’s blessing. In this way science is a political institution de facto, governed by society and beholden to its political will.

Society controls who

But it’s not just the decision of whether or not to do science that’s political, society has also historically wielded the power to select who is permitted to become a scientist. We see, now, the sexist and racist obstructions that have allowed science to be dominated by white males. To many African Americans growing up in a prejudiced society, the path to becoming a scientist is among the paths of most resistance. In the case of women scientists, they could only work as “volunteer” faculty, leaving accolades for their male counterparts to collect. Extraordinary scientists like Esther Lederberg, who discovered the lambda bacteriophage, or Lise Meitner, who literally split the atom, were written out of the textbooks as they watched their male collaborators accept Nobel prizes without them. Such is also the story of Rosalind Franklin, a personal hero of mine, who changed the entire field of biology and was instrumental in discovering the double-helical structure of DNA that we know today.

So, let’s keep in mind society’s ability to control who can become a scientist today. Moving towards Muslim bans and mass deportations not only weakens the talent we can import, but also robs many immigrants of the opportunity to fulfill their potential, and becoming the great contributors to society that they would have otherwise been. These actions threaten America’s leading position in research worldwide.

Society controls how

There’s also the matter of society’s control over how science is conducted. Scientists, the normal humans that they are, are just as susceptible to being swept up by the cultural currents of their society as anyone else. There was a time when naturalists and anthropologists found that their ‘science’ justified the subjugation of what were considered inferior races. It wasn’t too long ago that the CIA funded mind control studies, subjecting unknowing patients to hallucinogenic drugs and harmful chemicals.

Lest we forget, the US Public Health Service also conducted the Tuskegee syphilis experiment which denied black men treatment for the disease in order to study its effects, despite its availability. The true nature of the experiment was kept secret from the subjects, and the public at large, and it spanned four decades. Studies like this were allowed to take place until society, through the vehicle of politics, decided to make a change (institutional review boards, etc.). These changes are ethical and moral ones, which place the well-being and safety of the individual over the need to answer a scientific question, and they should always take place with conversations that include scientists and lawmakers.

Keep this point in mind today, when you see trends of muting federally-employed researchers and preventing them from communicating their research to each other and to the public. Science and secrecy don’t work very well together.

Society controls what

When we cast our vote in an election, part of what we’re doing is determining what will be prioritized in scientific research. Our elected officials control our money, and therefore control our scientific pursuits.

Society decides what kind of knowledge scientists are permitted to obtain and disseminate. The Vatican famously imprisoned Galileo and forced him to recant his scientific assertions that the Earth revolves around the Sun to avoid being burned at the stake. Under Stalin, the Soviet government supported the science of Lysenko, a pseudoscientist who rejected basic principles in biology, because his theories supported the principles of Marxism. This gave rise to Lysenkoism, a term used to reference the manipulation of the scientific process to achieve ideological goals. This term seems more and more relevant today.

Of course, control over what research scientists can conduct isn’t some arcane phenomenon that ended with the collapse of communism. Our elections decide our science. In 2001, President Bush imposed a ban on government funding for research on embryonic stem cells – halting the potential development of cure to scores of illnesses. He explained why he did this: “My position on these issues is shaped by deeply held beliefs”. Yet, the entire NIH budget didn’t suffer because of it. Funding was mostly allocated to research projects not related to stem cells or the environment. Priorities change elections. Likewise, during his terms, President Obama made it a priority to allocate funds for his favorite initiatives like translational science, the Precision Medicine Initiative, and the BRAIN Initiative. At the same time, NIH funding still fell short of what was requested from Congress during the course of his administration.

Today, the impact of elections on scientific research is palpable. Since his election, President Trump wasted no time before he began to launch attacks on clean air and water, on climate science, and on basic medical research. His proposed budget puts the public’s health in danger and slashes billions from the budgets of the NIH, the EPA, and other research institutions. Of course, it’s not only the president that we elect, but also Congress. A recent hearing on the scientific method and climate change devolved into an embarrassing public exercise in bickering and name-calling. In an intense exchange with climatologist Michael Mann, the Chairman of House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, no less, claimed that Science magazine was not an objective source.

An entanglement of society, politics, and science

In a thriving democracy, society forms politics, politics controls science, and science informs both society and politics. This isn’t new information, we all know it, yet some of us refuse to acknowledge the intimate interplay between society, politics, and science.

It is fact that scientists are no strangers to activism; there’s plenty of precedent.

In the 1930s, scientists formed the Association for American Scientific Workers (AAScW) with the goal of inviting scientists to take moral stands and involve them directly in political and social issues. At the time, they resolutely stood against fascism and were instrumental in improving the quality of science reporting. In 1946, Albert Einstein weighed in on racism in America in his eloquent essay The Negro Question, which he characterized as a “disease of white people”. Not only that, but he also co-chaired an anti-lynching campaign. Even later, during the Cold War, scientists didn’t all shy away from political engagement. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) expressly opposed the war in the Vietnam, and Carl Sagan was a prominent voice on the dangers of nuclear proliferation during the Reagan era.

Today, John Holdren, Chief Science Advisor to President Obama, refreshingly urged scientists to tithe away ten percent of their time to public service and activism. I can’t remember the last time I heard a prominent scientist make such a statement.

In many ways, the line between science and politics, if there ever was a thing, is already blurred. There are scientific concepts, supported by a robust body of factual data, which are now inherently politicized, not because of a controversy in the scientific community, but because they threaten one party’s agenda. Think climate change or evolution.

The scientific method is a remarkable tool for creating verifiable information, always expanding the boundaries of our knowledge, and challenging our preconceived notions of what reality is. It’s an investigation we’re making into ourselves. We’ve decided to pool our money together and divvy it up to women and men who work tirelessly at the forefront of knowledge to discover more. We decided this because we realized that science helps us live longer, healthier, and more enriching lives.

[admin]

Mind Science Foundation
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/27/20

The Mind Science Foundation (MSF) is a private nonprofit scientific foundation in San Antonio, Texas, established by philanthropist Thomas Baker Slick in 1958.

The Mind Science Foundation’s modern-day mission is to raise awareness and levels of funding for one of the major unsolved questions in science: how consciousness arises in human beings (Science July 1, 2005).

Awards and sponsorship of research

MSF is a principal, international supporter of pilot data grants for consciousness research. Some recent award recipients include:

• Fred Gage – Salk Institute for Biological Studies
• Susan Greenfield – Oxford University
• Christof Koch – California Institute of Technology
• V.S. Ramachandran – University of California San Diego[1]

Lecture events

In addition to funding leading researchers in the field, the Mind Science Foundation hosts a Distinguished Speakers Series to heighten public awareness of practical topics related to human consciousness. Examples of past speakers include:

• Jonas Salk – Inaugural Speaker, Distinguished Speakers Series
• Steven Laureys – University of Liege, Belgium
• J. Allan Hobson - Harvard Medical School
• Kay Redfield Jamison Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
• Temple Grandin – Colorado State University
• Jane Goodall – Goodall Institute

Sponsoring events

The Mind Science Foundation also supports international symposia and conferences focused on the scientific study of consciousness. MSF has also helped sponsor events with the following organizations:

• Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
o ASSC-8 Satellite meeting (Antwerp, 2004): “Coma and Impaired Consciousness”
o ASSC-9 (Caltech, 2005)
o ASSC-10 (Oxford, 2006)
• Mind and Life Institute
o Public Meeting with the Dalai Lama (M.I.T., 2003)
o Public Meeting with the Dalai Lama (Washington, D. C., 2005)

See also

• Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness

References

1. "Mind Science Foundation Hosts `Artful Brain' Lecture Featuring V.S. Ramachandran, MD, Ph.D." BusinessWire. 8 November 2004. Retrieved 7 December 2013.

External links

• Official website

[admin]

Esalen Institute
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 6/27/20


Esalen Institute
Esalen buildings and hot springs
Founder(s): Michael Murphy; Dick Price
Established: 1962
Focus: Humanistic alternative education
President: Gordon Wheeler
Key people: Terry Gilbey, General Manager and CEO; Camille Wright, Chief Financial Officer; Cheryl Fraenzl, Director of Programs
Owner: Esalen Institute

Location: Slates Hot Springs, Big Sur, California, United States
Address 55000 Highway One, Big Sur, CA 93920[1]
Website Esalen Institute


Meditation Room at Esalen


Esalen Art Barn, 2005

The Esalen Institute, commonly called Esalen, is a non-profit American retreat center and intentional community in Big Sur, California, which focuses on humanistic alternative education.[2] The Institute played a key role in the Human Potential Movement beginning in the 1960s. Its innovative use of encounter groups, a focus on the mind-body connection, and their ongoing experimentation in personal awareness introduced many ideas that later became mainstream.[3]

Esalen was founded by Stanford graduates Michael Murphy and Dick Price in 1962. Their intention was to support alternative methods for exploring human consciousness, what Aldous Huxley described as "human potentialities".[4][5] Over the next few years, Esalen became the center of practices and beliefs that make up the New Age movement, from Eastern religions/philosophy, to alternative medicine and mind-body interventions, to Gestalt Practice.[6]

Price ran the Institute until he was killed in a hiking accident in 1985. In 2012, the board hired professional executives to help raise money and keep the Institute profitable. Until 2016, Esalen offered over 500 workshops yearly[7] in areas including personal growth, meditation, massage, Gestalt Practice, yoga, psychology, ecology, spirituality, and organic food.[8] in 2016, about 15,000 people attended its workshops.[9]

In February 2017, the institute was cut off when Highway 1 was closed on either side of the hot springs. It closed its doors, evacuated guests via helicopter, and was forced to lay off 90% of its staff through at least July, when they reopened with limited workshop offerings. It also decided to revamp its offerings to include topics more relevant to a younger generation.[9]

As of July 2017, due to the limited access resulting from the road closures, the hot springs are only open to Esalen guests.[9]

Early history

Further information: Slates Hot Springs

The grounds of the Esalen Institute were first home to a Native American tribe known as the Esselen, from whom the institute adopted its name.[10] Carbon dating tests of artifacts found on Esalen's property have indicated a human presence as early as 2600 BCE.[11]

The location was homesteaded by Thomas Slate on September 9, 1882, when he filed a land patent under the Homestead Act of 1862.[12] The settlement began known as Slates Hot Springs. It was the first tourist-oriented business in Big Sur, frequented by people seeking relief from physical ailments. In 1910, the land was purchased by Henry Murphy,[13] a Salinas, California, physician. The official business name was "Big Sur Hot Springs" although it was more generally referred to as "Slate's Hot Springs".[14]


View of the building on the bluff housing the hot springs

Founding

Stanford grads meet


Richard Price in 1968

Michael Murphy and Dick Price both attended Stanford University in the late 1940s and early 1950s.[15] Both had developed an interest in human psychology and earned degrees in the subject in 1952.[16] Price was influenced by a lecture he heard Aldous Huxley give in 1960 titled "Human Potentialities". After graduating from Stanford, Price attended Harvard University to continue studying psychology. Murphy, meanwhile, traveled to Sri Aurobindo's ashram in India where he resided for several months[17] before returning to San Francisco. They met in San Francisco at the suggestion of Frederic Spiegelberg, a Stanford professor of comparative religion and Indic studies, with whom both had studied.[18] By then they had both dropped out of their graduate programs (Price at Harvard and Murphy at Stanford), and had served time in the military.[16] Although they had not met until this point, their experiences were similar enough for them to begin their partnership creating Esalen.[16]

After Price was hospitalized for eighteen months he was inspired to change the way people could experience a new way to live their life and experience new ideas and thoughts without judgment and influence from the outside world. He was inspired by his own interest in Buddhist practices and along with his own understanding of Taoism, he formed his teachings. He then took what Fritz Perls had taught him and created a process that is still taught and followed today. Today students all over the world follow the practices set up by Price in guidance, healing and the process and principles.[19]

Lease property

Price and Murphy wanted to create a venue where non-traditional workshops and lecturers could present their ideas free of the dogma associated with traditional education. The two began drawing up plans for a forum that would be open to ways of thinking beyond the constraints of mainstream academia while avoiding the dogma so often seen in groups organized around a single idea promoted by a charismatic leader. They envisioned offering a wide range of philosophies, religious disciplines and psychological techniques.[20]

In 1961, they went to look at property owned by the Murphy family at Slates Hot Springs in Big Sur.[21] It included a run-down hotel occupied in part by members of a Pentecostal church.[22] The property was patrolled by gun-toting Hunter S. Thompson. Gay men from San Francisco filled the baths on the weekends.[22]

Henry Murphy's widow and Michael's grandmother Vinnie "Bunnie" MacDonald Murphy, who owned the property, lived 62 miles (100 km) away in Salinas. She had previously refused to lease the property to anyone, even turning down an earlier request from Michael. She was afraid her grandson was going to "give the hotel to the Hindus," Murphy later said. Not long after, Thompson attempted to visit the baths with friends and got into a fistfight after antagonizing some of the gay men present. The men almost tossed him over the cliff. Murphy's father, a lawyer, finally persuaded his mother to allow her grandson to take over[22] and she agreed to lease the property to them in 1962.[23][24][25] The two men used capital that Price obtained from his father, who was a vice-president at Sears.[26] They incorporated their business as a non-profit named Esalen Institute in 1963.[27][28]

Develop counterculture workshops

Murphy and Price were assisted by Spiegelberg, Watts, Huxley and his wife Laura, as well as by Gerald Heard and Gregory Bateson. They modeled the concept of Esalen partially upon Trabuco College, founded by Heard as a quasi-monastic experiment in the mountains east of Irvine, California, and later donated to the Vedanta Society.[29] Their intent was to provide "a forum to bring together a wide variety of approaches to enhancement of the human potential... including experiential sessions involving encounter groups, sensory awakening, gestalt awareness training, related disciplines."[30][31] They stated that they did not want to be viewed as a "cult" or a new church but that it was to be a center where people could explore the concepts that Price and Murphy were passionate about. The philosophy of Esalen lies in the idea that "the cosmos, the universe itself, the whole evolutionary unfoldment is what a lot of philosophers call slumbering spirit. The divine is incarnate in the world and is present in us and is trying to manifest," according to Murphy.[16]

Alan Watts gave the first lecture at Esalen in January 1962.[32] Gia-fu Feng joined Price and Murphy,[33] along with Bob Breckenridge, Bob Nash, Alice and Jim Sellers, as the first Esalen staff members.[25] In the middle of that same year Abraham Maslow, a prominent humanistic psychologist, just happened to drive into the grounds and soon became an important figure at the institute.[34] In the fall of 1962, they published a catalog advertising workshops with such titles as "Individual and Cultural Definitions of Rationality," "The Expanding Vision" and "Drug-Induced Mysticism".[32] Their first seminar series in the fall of 1962 was "The Human Potentiality," based on a lecture by Huxley.[3]

Fritz Perls residency

In 1964, Fritz Perls began what became a five-year long residency at Esalen, leaving a lasting influence. Perls offered many Gestalt therapy seminars at the institute until he left in July 1969.[35] Jim Simkin[36] and Perls led Gestalt training courses at Esalen. Simkin started a Gestalt training center[37] on property next door that was later incorporated into Esalen's main campus.[38]

When Perls left Esalen he considered it to be "in crisis again". He saw young people without any training leading encounter groups. And he feared that charlatans would take the lead.[39] However, Grogan[who?] claims that Perls’ practice at Esalen had been ethically "questionable",[40] and according to Kripal, Perls insulted Abraham Maslow.[41]

Gestalt Practice developed

Dick Price became one of Perls' closest students. Price managed the Institute and developed his own form he called Gestalt Practice,[42] which he taught at Esalen until his death in a hiking accident in 1985.[43] Michael Murphy lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and wrote non-fiction books about Esalen-related topics, as well as several novels.[44]

Leads counterculture movement

Esalen gained popularity quickly and started to regularly publish catalogs full of programs. The facility was large enough to run multiple programs simultaneously, so Esalen created numerous resident teacher positions.[45] Murphy recruited Will Schutz, the well-known encounter group leader, to take up permanent residence at Esalen.[46] All this combined to firmly position Esalen in the nexus of the counterculture of the 1960s.[47]

The institute gained increased attention in 1966 when several magazines wrote about it. George Leonard published an article in Look magazine about the California scene which mentioned Esalen and included a picture of Murphy.[48] Time magazine published an article about Esalen in September 1967.[49] The New York Times Magazine published an article by Leo E. Litwak in late December.[50] Life also published an article about the resort.[51] These articles increased the media and the public's awareness of the institute in the U.S. and abroad. Esalen responded by holding large-scale conferences in Midwestern and East Coast cities,[52] as well as in Europe. Esalen opened a satellite center in San Francisco that offered extensive programming until it closed in the mid-1970s for financial reasons.[53]

Programs and management


Entrance to Esalen Institute

The institute continues to offer workshops about humanistic psychology, physical wellness, and spiritual awareness. The institute has also added workshops on permaculture and ecological sustainability.[54] Other workshops cover a wide range of subjects including arts, health, Gestalt, integral thought, martial arts, massage, dance, mythology, philosophical inquiry, somatics, spiritual and religious studies, ecopsychology, wilderness experience, yoga, tai chi, mindfulness practice, and meditation. The institute was closed for the first half of 2017 and forced to drastically reduce staff. They also decided to revamp their offerings upon reopening to include topics more relevant to a younger generation.[9]

Center for Theory and Research

In 1998, Esalen launched the Center for Theory and Research to initiate new areas of practice and action which foster social change and realization of the human potential.[55] It is the research and development arm of Esalen Institute.[56] As of 2016, Michael Cornwall, who previously worked in the Institutes' Schizophrenia Research Project at Agnews State Hospital, was conducting workshops titled the Alternative Views and Approaches to Psychosis Initiative at Esalen. He was inviting leaders in the field of psychosis treatment to attend the workshops.[57]

Management changes

Esalen has been making changes to respond to internal and external factors.[58][59][60] Dick Price was the key leader of the institute until his sudden death in a hiking accident in late 1985 brought about many changes in personnel and programming.[61] Steven Donovan became president of the institute,[62] and Brian Lyke served as general manager.[61] Nancy Lunney became the director of programming,[63] and Dick Price's son David Price served as general manager of Esalen beginning in the mid-1990s.[64]

The baths were destroyed in 1998 by severe weather and were rebuilt at great expense, but this caused severe institutional stress.[65] Afterward, Andy Nusbaum developed an economic plan to stabilize Esalen's finances.[66]

In 2011, the Institute commissioned the company Beyond the Leading Edge to conduct a Leadership Culture Survey to assess the quality of its leadership culture. The results were negative. The survey measured how well the leadership "builds quality relationships, fosters teamwork, collaborates, develops people, involves people in decision making and planning, and demonstrates a high level of interpersonal skill." In the "relating dimension" the survey returned a score of 18%, compared to a desired 88%. It also produced strongly dissonant scores in measures of community welfare, relating with interpersonal intelligence, clearly communicating vision, and building a sense of personal worth within the community. It ranked management as overly compliant and lacking authenticity. However, the survey found that Esalen closely matched its overall goal for customer focus.[67]

Gordon Wheeler dramatically restructured Esalen management.[68] These changes prompted Christine Stewart Price, the widow of Dick Price, to withdraw from the institute, and found an organization named the Tribal Ground Circle with the intention to preserve Dick Price's legacy.[69][70]

Early leaders and programs


Aldous Huxley

In the few years after its founding, many of the seminars[71] like "The Value of Psychotic Experience" attempted to challenge the status quo. There were even Esalen programs that questioned the movement of which Esalen itself was a part—for instance, "Spiritual and Therapeutic Tyranny: The Willingness To Submit". There were also a series of encounter groups focused on racial prejudice.[72]

Early leaders included many well-known individuals, including Ansel Adams, Gia-fu Feng, Buckminster Fuller, Timothy Leary, Robert Nadeau, Linus Pauling, Carl Rogers, Virginia Satir, B.F. Skinner, and Arnold Toynbee. Rather than merely lecturing, many leaders experimented with what Huxley called the non-verbal humanities: the education of the body, the senses, and the emotions. Their intention was to help individuals develop awareness of their present flow of experience, to express this fully and accurately, and to listen to feedback. These "experiential" workshops were particularly well attended and were influential in shaping Esalen's future course.[73]


William Schutz at Esalen, circa 1987

Staff residency

Because of Esalen's isolated location, its operational staff members have lived on site from the beginning and for many years collectively contributed to the character of the institute.[74] The community has been steeped in a form of Gestalt that pervades all aspects of daily life, including meeting structures, workplace practices, and individual language styles.[75] There is a preschool on site called the Gazebo, serving the children of staff, some program participants, and affiliated local residents.[76]

Scholars in residence

Esalen has sponsored long-term resident scholars, including notable individuals such as Gregory Bateson, Joseph Campbell, Stanislav Grof, Sam Keen, George Leonard, Fritz Perls, Ida Rolf, Virginia Satir, William Schutz, and Alan Watts.

Esalen Massage and Bodywork Association

Bodywork has always been a significant part of the Esalen experience. In the late 1990s, the "EMBA" was organized as a semi-autonomous Esalen association for the regulation of Esalen massage practitioners.[77]

Past initiatives and projects

Esalen Institute has sponsored many research initiatives, educational projects, and invitational conferences. The Big Sur facility has been used for these events, as well as other locations, including international sites.

Arts events


Esalen Institute from the air in May 1972

In 1964, Joan Baez led a workshop entitled "The New Folk Music"[78] which included a free performance. This was the first of seven "Big Sur Folk Festivals" featuring many of the era's music legends. The 1969 concert included musicians who had just come from the Woodstock Festival. This event was featured in a documentary movie, Celebration at Big Sur, which was released in 1971.

John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg performed together at Esalen. Robert Bly, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Kenneth Rexroth (who led one of the first workshops), Gary Snyder and others held poetry readings and workshops.

In 1994, President and CEO Sharon Thom[79] created an artist-in-residence program to provide artists with a two-week retreat in which to focus upon works in progress. These artists interacted with the staff, offered informal gatherings, and staged performances on the newly created dance platform. Located next to the Art Barn, the dance platform was used by Esalen teachers for dance and martial arts. The platform was later covered by a dome and renamed the Leonard Pavilion after deceased Esalen past president and board member, George Leonard.

In 1995 and 1996, Esalen hosted two arts festivals which gathered together artists, poets, musicians, photographers and performers, including artist Margot McLean, psychotherapist James Hillman, guitarist Michael Hedges and Joan Baez. All staff members were allowed to attend every class and performance that did not interfere with their schedules. Arts festivals have since become a popular yearly event at Esalen.[80]

Schizophrenia Research Project

Encouraged by Dick Price, the Schizophrenia Research Project was conducted over a three-year period at Agnews State Hospital in San Jose, California, involving 80 young males diagnosed with schizophrenia.[81] Funded in part by Esalen Institute, this program was co-sponsored by the California Department of Mental Hygiene (reorganized: CMHSA) and the National Institute of Mental Health. It explored the thesis that the health of certain patients would permanently improve if their psychotic process was not interrupted by administration of antipsychotic pharmaceutical drugs.[82] Julian Silverman was chief of research for the project. He also served as Esalen's general manager in the 1970s.[83] The Agnews double blind study was the largest first-episode psychosis research project ever conducted in the United States. It demonstrated that the young men given a placebo had a 75 percent lower re-hospitalization rate and much better outcomes than the men who received anti-psychotic medication. These results were used as justification for medication-free programs in the San Francisco Bay Area.[84] Esalen has recently[when?] begun to revive some of this interest in schizophrenia and psychosis, and hosted the R.D. Laing Symposium and workshops on compassionately responding to psychosis.[85]

Publishing

Starting in 1969, in association with Viking Press, the institute published a series of 17 books about Esalen-related topics, including the first edition of Michael Murphy's novel, Golf in the Kingdom (1971).[86] Some of these books remain in print. In the mid-1980s, Esalen entered into a joint publishing arrangement with Lindisfarne Press to publish a small library of Russian philosophical and theological books.[87]

Soviet–American Exchange Program


Boris Yeltsin

In 1979, Esalen began the Soviet–American Exchange Program (later renamed: Track Two, an institute for citizen diplomacy).[88] This initiative came at a time when Cold War tensions were at their peak. The program was credited with substantial success in fostering peaceful private exchanges between citizens of the "super powers".[89] In the 1980s, Michael Murphy and his wife Dulce were instrumental in organizing the program with Soviet citizen Joseph Goldin, in order to provide a vehicle for citizen-to-citizen relations between Russians and Americans. In 1982, Esalen and Goldin pioneered the first U.S.–Soviet Space Bridge, allowing Soviet and American citizens to speak directly with one another via satellite communication. In 1988, Esalen brought Abel Aganbegyan, one of Mikhail Gorbachev's chief economic advisors, to the United States. In 1989, Esalen brought Boris Yeltsin on his first trip to the United States, although Yeltsin did not visit the Esalen facility in Big Sur. Esalen arranged meetings for Yeltsin with then President George H. W. Bush as well as many other leaders in business and government. Two former presidents of the exchange program included Jim Garrison and Jim Hickman. After Gorbachev stepped down, and effectively dissolved the Soviet Union, Garrison helped establish The State of the World Forum, with Gorbachev as its convening chairman. These successes led to other Esalen citizen diplomacy programs, including exchanges with China, an initiative to further understanding among Jews, Christians and Muslims, as well as further work on Russian-American relations.[90]

Prices and finances

2017 closure

On February 12, 2017, a number of mud and land slides closed Highway 1 in several locations to the south and north of the hot springs and caused Esalen to partially shut down.[91] On February 18, 2017, shifting earth damaged a pier supporting the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge north of Esalen and forced CalTrans to close Highway 1.[92] CalTrans determined that the bridge was damaged beyond repair and announced an accelerated project to replace the bridge by September.[93][94][95] Following closure of the bridge, Esalen was cut off, and resorted to evacuating dozens of guests by helicopter.[9] A landslide at Mud Creek south of the hot springs severely restricted vehicle access to the resort, and Esalen temporarily closed its doors. Then, on May 20, 2017, a new slide at Mud Creek closed Highway 1 for at least a year.

On June 20, Eslalen announced that it would lay off 45 staff members through at least July, leaving only about 10 percent of its staff.[9][96]

Esalen partially reopened on July 28, 2017, offering limited workshops.[97] It plans to add more seminars after the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge reopens in September 2017.

Attendance and costs

In 2012, 600 Esalen workshops were attended by more than 12,000 people. Topics ranged from sustainable business practices to hypnosis to "The Holy Fool: Crazy Wisdom From Van Gogh to Tina Fey and The Big Lebowski."[22]

As of 2015, a weekend workshop, including the program, meals, and a place for a sleeping bag in a communal area, cost a minimum of $405 per person. A couple could rent a private room for $730 per person. Week-long workshops begin at $900 and couples are charged $1,700 per person to stay in a private room.[98] In 2013, the Institute charges participants in its month-long, residential licensed massage practitioner training programs, $4910, including board and room.[99] In 1987, a weekend workshop along with a single room and meals cost $270, and a five-day workshop cost $530.[100]

Revenue and expenses

In 2013, the Institute reported revenue of $18,513,254, $13,066,407 from programs, and after expenses of $13,515,552 a net income of $4,997,702. In that year it paid CEO Patricia McEntee $152,077[101] In 2014, it reported total revenue of $15,934,586, expenses totalling $14,472,201, and net income of $1,462,385. McEntee was paid $157,839.[102]

The company spent nearly $10 million for renovations from 2014 to 2016, including $7.4 million to renovate the main lodge and add a cafe and bar. It also spent $1.8 million on a six-room guesthouse. There is only limited internet cellular service available, but Esalen is planning to make some of its workshops available to online participants.[9]

Lease terms

The annual cost of its 87-year lease for the 27 acre site[96] from the Vinnie A. Murphy Trust—which extends through 2049—was $344,704 in 2014. McEntee told the Monterey County Weekly that the cost of the lease is highly discounted, and that the terms of the lease allow the trust to re-assess the lease terms in 2017. This could potentially increase the institute's rent to market value.[103]

Past teachers

Past guest teachers include:

• Ansel Adams
• Joan Baez
• Ellen Bass
• Robert Bly
• Gregory Bateson
• Ray Bradbury
• Joseph Campbell
• Fritjof Capra
• Carlos Castaneda
• Deepak Chopra
• Phil Cousineau
• Harvey Cox
• David Darling
• Erik Davis
• Warren Farrell
• Moshe Feldenkrais
• Richard Feynman
• Matthew Fox
• Fred Frith
• Betty Fuller[104][105][106]
• Buckminster Fuller
• Spalding Gray
• Stanislav Grof
• Michael Harner
• Andrew Harvey
• John Heider[107][108][109][110]
• Paul Horn
• Chungliang Al Huang
• James Hillman
• Albert Hofmann
• Aldous Huxley
• Sam Keen
• Ken Kesey
• Paul Krassner
• R. D. Laing
• George Leonard
• Dennis Lewis
• John C. Lilly
• Amory Lovins
• Abraham Maslow
• Peter Matthiessen
• Rollo May
• Terence McKenna
• Robert Nadeau
• Claudio Naranjo
• Sara Nelson
• Babatunde Olatunji
• Dean Ornish
• Humphry Osmond
• Linus Pauling
• Fritz Perls
• J. B. Rhine
• Carl Rogers
• Ida Rolf
• Gabrielle Roth
• Jerry Rubin
• Douglas Rushkoff
• Virginia Satir
• Will Schutz
• Charlotte Selver
• B.F. Skinner
• Huston Smith
• Gary Snyder
• Susan Sontag
• David Steindl-Rast
• Paul Tillich
• Arnold J. Toynbee
• George Vithoulkas
• Alan Watts
• Robert Anton Wilson
• Andrew Weil
• Marion Woodman 

In popular culture

Cultural influence

Esalen has been cited as having played a key role in the cultural transformations of the 1960s.[111] In its beginnings as a "laboratory for new thought", it was seen by some as the headquarters of the human potential movement.[112] Its use of encounter groups, a focus on the mind-body connection, and their ongoing experimentation in personal awareness introduced many ideas to American society that later became mainstream.[3] In its early years, guest lecturers and workshop leaders included many leading thinkers, psychologists, and philosophers including Erik Erikson, Ken Kesey, Alan Watts, John Lilly, Buckminster Fuller, Aldous Huxley, Linus Pauling, Fritz Perl, Joseph Campbell, Robert Bly and Carl Rogers.[113]

Esalen has also been the subject of some criticism and controversy.[114] The Economist wrote, "For many others in America and around the world, Esalen stands more vaguely for that metaphorical point where ‘East meets West’ and is transformed into something uniquely and mystically American or New Agey. And for a great many others yet, Esalen is simply that notorious bagno-bordello where people had sex and got high throughout the 1960s and 1970s before coming home talking psychobabble and dangling crystals."[6][115][116][117]

The Human Potential Movement was criticized for espousing an ethic that the inner-self should be freely expressed in order to reach a person's true potential. Some people saw this ethic as an aspect of Esalen's culture. The historian Christopher Lasch claimed that humanistic techniques encourage narcissistic, spiritual materialistic or self-obsessive thoughts and behaviors.[118] In 1990 a graffiti artist spray painted "Jive shit for rich white folk" on the entrance to Esalen,[74] highlighting class and race issues. Some thought that this was a regression of progress away from true spiritual growth.[74] Michel Houellebecq's Atomised traces the New Age movement's influence on the novel's protagonists to older generations' chance meetings at Esalen.

Popular media

Films

In the comedy-drama Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), sophisticated Los Angeles residents Bob (played by Robert Culp) and Carol Sanders (Natalie Wood) spend a weekend of emotional honesty at an Esalen-style retreat,[119] after which they return to their life determined to embrace free love and complete openness.

In the film What About Bob? (1991), Bill Murray's character mentions that he hasn't felt this good since Esalen, upon his arrival at his psychiatrist's vacation home.

Literature

In Edward St Aubyn's comic novel On the Edge (1998), Esalen features prominently.[citation needed]

In Thomas Pynchon's novel Inherent Vice (2009) and Paul Thomas Anderson's eponymous 2014 film adaptation, the Chryskylodon Institute is modeled after Esalen.[120]

In Norman Rush's novel Mating (1992), Esalen is referred to as a "twit factory." [121]

Television

The BBC television series, The Century of the Self (2002), is critical of the Human Potentials Movement and includes video segments recorded at Esalen.[122]

The Mad Men show finale, "Person to Person" (airdate May 17, 2015), features Don and Stephanie staying at an Esalen-like coastline retreat in the year 1970.[123]

In True Detective season 2, the Panticapaeum Institute is largely based on the Esalen Institute.[124]

In You season 1, Beck's friends tell Joe that Peach had gone to "Esalen" and Beck to a writers' retreat.

Music

On July 10, 1968 The Beatles guitarist George Harrison was given sitar lessons at Esalen by Ravi Shankar for the movie Raga (film).[125]

References

Notes

1. "Contact Us".
2. Goldman 2012, pp. 2–
3. Misiroglu, Gina, ed. (2009). American Countercultures: An Encyclopedia of Nonconformists, Alternative Lifestyles, and Radical Ideas in U.S. History. Armonk, N.Y.: Sharpe Reference. pp. 238–239. ISBN 978-0765680600. Retrieved 20 October 2016.
4. Kripal, Jeffrey J. (15 April 2007). Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226453699 – via Google Books.
5. Anderson 2004, p. 64
6. "Where 'California' bubbled up". The Economist. 19 December 2007.
7. "Esalen Institute Launches Campus Renewal with Special Gift for Most Significant Renovation in 52-year History". May 15, 2015. Retrieved October 21, 2016.
8. Kripal 2007
9. Krieger, Lisa M. (21 July 2017). "Esalen's survival story: A tale of transformation". The Mercury News. Retrieved 3 August 2017.
10. Kripal 2007, p. 30
11. Documentation provided by Steven Harper of radiocarbon dating, performed by members of the Sonoma State University Cultural Resources Faculty, that produced the following results: 4,630 +/- 100 years BP (before present). Harper notes confirmation by similar tests from Big Creek (4–5 miles south of Esalen Institute), which produced: 6,400 years BP, as cited in The Prehistory of Big Creek by Terry Jones (2000).
12. "Thomas B Slate, Patent #CACAAA-092028". The Land Patents. Retrieved 9 August 2016.
13. Kripal 2007, p. 32
14. Kripal 2007, p. 95
15. Goldman 2012, p. 56
16. Abraham, Kera; Andersin, Mark C. "One Half-Century at Esalen Institute". Monterey County Weekly. Monterey County Weekly. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
17. Kripal 2007, p. 60
18. Kripal 2007, p. 47 et seq
19. "Esalen Legacy - Dick Price".
20. Anderson 2004, p. 48
21. "Dick Price: An Interview". Esalen. Retrieved October 3, 2015.
22. Hockaday, Peter (May 18, 2015). "Hippies, nudity, and Don Draper: Inside Big Sur's Esalen Institute featured in 'Mad Men'". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 18 October 2016.
23. "John Andrew Murphy", United States Census, 1940; Salinas, California; roll T627_267, page 19A,, enumeration district 27–5, Family History film 715. Retrieved on August 10, 2016.
24. "Michigan Births and Christenings, 1775–1995". Salt Lake City, Utah: FamilySearch. 2009–2010.Missing or empty |url= (help)
25. Kripal 2007, p. 98
26. Kripal & Shuck 2005, p. 148
27. Durham, David L. (1998). California's Geographic Names: A Gazetteer of Historic and Modern Names of the State. Clovis, Calif.: Word Dancer Press. p. 960. ISBN 1-884995-14-4.
28. Goldman 2012, p. 19
29. Kripal 2007, p. 91
30. The Aquarian Conspiracy
31. The Mother of All Webs Who Gotcha! Gyeorgos C. Hatonn. page 211
32. Anderson 2004, p. 65
33. Anderson 2004, p. 63
34. Kripal & Shuck 2005, p. 2
35. Perls 1992
36. Kripal 2007, p. 175
37. Fadul 2014, p. 204 Encyclopedia of Theory & Practice in Psychotherapy & Counseling
38. Leyde, Tom (March 20, 2015). "Esalen Institute to get a face lift". Santa Cruz Sentinel : Architecture, March 20, 2015. Retrieved October 2, 2015.
39. Perls 1992, p. 249
40. Grogan 2008, p. 196
41. Kripal 2007, p. 157
42. Callahan 2014
43. The Only Way Out Is In: The Life Of Richard Price Barclay James Erickson, in Kripal & Shuck 2005
44. Kripal 2007, pp. 274, 291–2
45. Anderson 2004, p. 151
46. Anderson 2004, p. 156
47. William Irwin Thompson, "Going Beyond it at Big Sur" in At the Edge of History: Speculations on the Transformation of Culture, p. 27-66, Harper & Row (1971) ISBN 978-0686675709
48. Kripal 2007, p. 207
49. Anderson 2004, p. 160
50. Litwak, Leo E. (December 31, 1967). "A Trip to Esalen Institute – Joy Is the Prize". The New York Times Magazine. pp. 119 et seq.
51. Anderson 2004, p. 172
52. Anderson 2004, p. 219
53. Kripal 2007, p. 181 et seq
54. "The Esalen Farm & Garden: Cultivating Soil, Plants and People".
55. Esalen Center for Theory and Research.
56. Kripal 2007, p. 439
57. Alternative Views and Approaches to Psychosis, November 2012. An Esalen Center For Theory and Research Initiative at Esalen Institute.
58. Anderson 2004, pp. 147ff
59. Goldman 2012, p. 44
60. Kripal 2007, p. 463
61. Kripal 2007, p. 389
62. Goldman 2012, p. 65
63. Kripal 2007, p. 376
64. Goldman 2012, pp. 107ff
65. Kripal 2007, p. 436
66. Kripal 2007, p. 437
67. "Leadership Culture Survey Online Summary". Esalen Leadership. Archived from the original on 2012-07-29. Retrieved 19 October 2016.
68. Goldman 2012, p. 44
69. Goldman 2012, p. 65
70. "Tribal Ground Circle". Archived from the original on September 28, 2013. Retrieved September 29, 2016.
71. Kripal 2007, pp. 101 et seq
72. Kripal 2007, pp. 182 et seq
73. Kripal 2007, pp. 104
74. Kripal 2007, p. 401
75. Kripal 2007, p. 172
76. "Gazebo School Park Early Childhood Program".
77. Goldman 2012, p. 67
78. Anderson 2004, p. 102
79. Kripal 2007, p. 434
80. "EsalenArtsFestival2011". Archived from the original on 2013-02-26.
81. Anderson 2004, pp. 217–219
82. "Rappaport, M. "Are There Schizophrenics for Whom Drugs May be Unnecessary or Contraindicated?" International Pharmacopsychiatry 13 (1978) p. 100 et seq" (PDF).
83. "Julian Silverman".
84. Cornwall 2002, p. 4
85. "January workshops".[dead link]
86. Kripal 2007, p. 527
87. Kripal 2007, p. 320
88. "Track II (Citizen) Diplomacy" at The Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base Project.
89. Track Two, An Institute For Citizen Diplomacy Archived 2011-10-26 at the Wayback Machine.
90. Esalen CTR: Accomplishments in Citizen Diplomacy.
91. "Esalen's Temporary Closure: Frequently Asked Questions | Esalen". esalen.org. Retrieved 20 June2017.
92. Johnson, Lizzie (February 25, 2017). "Bridge failure severs Big Sur's ties to outside world". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 26 February 2017.
93. "News, Breaking News and More: Monterey County Herald". montereyherald.com. Archived from the original on 2017-02-23. Retrieved 2017-06-20.
94. Marino, Pam. "UPDATE: Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge on Highway 1 closed to traffic until further notice".
95. Pogash, Carol (21 February 2017). "Big Sur ravaged by floods, mudslides and storms: 'Paradise can turn on you'". The Guardian.
96. Lindt, John. "Esalen Institute in Big Sur will lay off 45 employees". The Tribune. Retrieved 20 June 2017.
97. Mahoney, Erika. "Big Sur's Esalen Reopens After Record Long Closure". NPR 90.3 KAZU. Retrieved 30 July 2017.
98. SHAPIRO, MICHAEL (December 31, 2015). "Getaways: Esalen Institute in Big Sur is a place to learn, grow and heal". Santa Rosa Press Democrat. Retrieved 18 October 2016.
99. "Esalen Massage Practitioner Training Course Catalog" (PDF). Retrieved 18 October 2016.
100. Kahn, Alice (December 6, 1987). "Ways to 'Do' Esalen". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 18,2016.
101. "2013 IRS Form 990" (PDF). Retrieved October 18, 2016.
102. "2014 IRS Form 990" (PDF). Retrieved October 18, 2016.
103. "Esalen's a nonprofit, but a visit doesn't come cheap". October 4, 2012. Retrieved October 18,2014.
104. Anderson 2004, pp. 159, 178, 179, 207, 220, 234, 253, 320
105. Kripal 2007, p. 490
106. Wildflower, Leni. The Hidden History Of Coaching, Open University Press (2013) p. 17
107. Kripal 2007, p. 547 [listing numerous citations]
108. Anderson 2004, p. 159
109. Heider, John The Tao of Leadership Green Dragon Publishing (2005)
110. "John Heider".
111. "40 years later, Woodstock's spiritual vibes still resonate", Houston Chronicle. August 6, 2009.
112. Martin, Douglas (January 19, 2010). "George Leonard, 86, voice of '60s counterculture – The Boston Globe". archive.boston.com. Retrieved 20 October 2016.
113. Ollivier, Debra, ed. (25 May 2012). "Esalen: 50 Years Ago, A 'Crazy Place On A Godforsaken Road' Launched The New Age Movement". The Huffington Post. Huffington Post. Retrieved 20 October2016.
114. "Esalen's Identity Crisis", Los Angeles Times Magazine. September 5, 2004.
115. "Like countless spiritual pilgrims, Esalen Institute faces its own midlife crisis".
116. Norimitsu Onishi (August 19, 2012). "Celebrating the Past, and Debating the Future". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-08-20.
117. Kera Abraham and Mark Anderson. "One Half-Century at Esalen Institute" Archived 2013-01-29 at Archive.today. Monterey County Weekly. October 4, 2012.
118. Lasch 1978, p. 13
119. Anderson 2004, p. 140
120. "The Southern California Landscape of Inherent Vice". Los Angeles Magazine. 12 December 2014.
121. Rush, Norman. (1992). Mating (1st Vintage International ed.). New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 067973709X. OCLC 25747644.
122. The Century of the Self]. YouTube segments. 2002.
123. Dean, Will (17 May 2015). "Mad Men recap: season seven, episode 14 – Person to Person (warning: spoilers)". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 May 2015.
124. Gallagher, Caitlin. "Is The Panticapaeum Institute From 'True Detective' A Real Place? Ani's Father's Retreat Resembles An Actual Facility". Bustle. Retrieved October 3, 2015. ...there is one real place that Vulture pointed out might have inspired both Mad Men and True Detective — and that's the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California.
125. George Harrison & Ravi Shankar - Raga - Big Sur, CA, US (10.06.1968)]. YouTube segments. 1968.

Bibliography

• Anderson, Walter Truett (2004) [1983]. The Upstart Spring: Esalen and the Human Potential Movement: The First Twenty Years. Addison Wesley Publishing Company. ISBN 0-595-30735-3.
• Callahan, John F., ed. (2014). Manual of Gestalt Practice in the Tradition of Dick Price. The Gestalt Legacy Project. ISBN 978-1-3049-6247-8.
• Cornwall, Michael W. (2002). Alternative Treatment of Psychosis, A Dissertation presented at the California Institute of Integral Studies (PDF). San Francisco, CA.
• Fadul, Jose A., ed. (2014). Encyclopedia of Theory & Practice in Psychotherapy & Counseling. Lulu Press. ISBN 9781312078369.
• Goldman, Marion S. (2012). The American Soul Rush: Esalen and the Rise of Spiritual Privilege. New York University Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-3287-8 – via Project Muse.
• Grogan, Jessica Lynn (2008). A Cultural History of the Humanistic Psychology Movement (PDF). The University of Texas at Austin. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-10-04. Retrieved 2015-10-02.
• Kripal, Jeffrey (2007). Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-45369-9.
• Kripal, Jeffrey; Shuck, Glenn W., eds. (2005). On The Edge Of The Future: Esalen And The Evolution Of American Culture. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-21759-8.
• Lasch, C. (1978). The Culture of Narcissism. New York: W.W. Norton.
• Perls, Frederick (1992). In and Out of the Garbage Pail. Real People Press [1969]; Gestalt Journal Press. ISBN 978-0-939266-17-3.

Further reading

• Callahan, John F., ed. (2014). The Life and Practice of Richard Price. The Gestalt Legacy Project. ISBN 978-1-312-06228-3.
• Lattin, Don (2004). Following Our Bliss : How the Spiritual Ideals of the Sixties Shape Our Lives Today. HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0-06-009394-3.
• Norman, Jeff (2004). Big Sur. Images of America Series. Arcadia Publishing. ISBN 0-7385-2913-3.
• Miller, Stuart (1971). Hot Springs: The True Adventures of the First New York Jewish Literary Intellectual in the Human-Potential Movement. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 0-226-45369-3.
• Murphy, Michael (1971). Golf in the Kingdom. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-019549-1.
• Murphy, Michael (1992). The Future of the Body. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam. ISBN 0-14-019549-1.

External links

• Esalen Institute website
• Notes on Gestalt Practice
• "In Murphy's Kingdom" article by Jackie Krentzman
• "Huxley on Huxley". Dir. Mary Ann Braubach. Cinedigm, 2010. DVD. Archived from the original on 2014-11-08. Retrieved 2013-08-05.
• "Totally on Fire: The Experience of Founding Esalen" from Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion by Jeff Kripal