Myth 23 - That the Discovery of Australopithecus in 1925 Belatedly Confirmed Darwin’s 1871 Scientific Prediction of African Human Origins

Summary

In popular narratives of paleoanthropology and human origins, Charles Darwin is customarily cited as the first person to propose in 1871 that the African continent was the original home of the human species—a proposition subsequently supported in 1925 by Raymond Dart’s announcement of the discovery of Australopithecus africanus. While correct in its details, this mythological reading of the discovery of African origins elides critical points of debate and disjuncture and quietly obscures the formative roles of race science and racist science in the development of the evolutionary sciences. This chapter explores whether Darwin’s original hypothesis was as unusual as customarily claimed; when and how Dart’s Australopithecus came to be accepted as valid evolutionary evidence; and traces the mid-twentieth century origins of the myth itself.