Episode 35: From the Archive - Raymond Dart
Origin Stories
Meredith Johnson
4.8 • 554 Ratings
🗓️ 14 February 2019
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Raymond Dart was getting dressed for a wedding when he was given two boxes of rocks and fossils. Inside the boxes, he found the first evidence of humanity's African origins. This episode tells the story of the 1924 discovery of the Taung Child through a never-before-released lecture by Dr. Raymond Dart.
Show Notes
The Leakey Foundation is celebrating its 50th anniversary by sharing rare, previously unreleased lectures from the Foundation's archive.
The fourth lecture in this "From the Archive" series is by Dr. Raymond Dart, a neuroanatomist, discoverer of the Taung Child, and the person who named the genus Australopithecus.
Raymond Dart was born in Australia in 1893. He studied biology and became a medical doctor specializing in neuroanatomy. He moved to South Africa in 1922 to help establish the anatomy department at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. In 1924, as he was getting dressed for a wedding, he received two boxes full of rocks and fossils from a nearby mine. The fossils inside those boxes changed his life – and our understanding of human origins.
Dr. Dart gave two Leakey Foundation lectures. In this episode, you'll hear clips from one of them, along with the entirety of his lecture entitled "Why Study Human Origins?" which was recorded in Washington, D.C., in 1975.
The Leakey Foundation
Origin Stories is a project of The Leakey Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding human origins research and outreach.
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Credits
Host and Series Producer: Meredith Johnson
Sound Engineer/Mix: Katie McMurran
Theme Music: Henry Nagle
Additional Music: Lee Rosevere "Tech Toys"
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Origin Stories, the Leaky Foundation podcast. I'm Meredith Johnson. |
| 0:16.4 | Today we have another installment of our From the Archive series, celebrating the Leaky Foundation's 50th anniversary by sharing never-before-released lectures from our archive. |
| 0:27.3 | And since it's Valentine's Day, this episode is a love letter to fossils. |
| 0:32.6 | And the story of one man's fateful encounter with a very special fossil on his best friend's wedding day. |
| 0:40.4 | Before we get started, though, I want to say thank you to everyone who's donated to our |
| 0:45.0 | Origin Stories' quadruple match fundraising challenge. Your support has been incredible, and we're |
| 0:50.5 | only $310 away from our goal. If you don't know about our quadruple match challenge, here's what it is. |
| 0:58.0 | Three generous donors are matching all donations to origin stories four to one, |
| 1:03.1 | up to a total of $5,000, so every dollar you give becomes $4 to support this show. |
| 1:10.0 | You can learn more at leakyfoundation.org slash origin stories challenge, |
| 1:14.8 | and I'll be giving a personal shout-out to our most recent donors at the end of this episode. |
| 1:19.9 | Now, on to today's lecture from the archive. |
| 1:24.7 | Today we have Raymond Dart, the man who discovered the Tong Child, the very first early human |
| 1:31.5 | fossil found in Africa, the fossil that revolutionized our understanding of the human story, |
| 1:37.6 | and it was a discovery that changed Raymond Dart's life forever. You see, Raymond Dart didn't intend to become a paleoanthropologist. |
| 1:47.3 | He was born in Australia on February 4, 1893. He studied biology and became a medical doctor, |
| 1:55.4 | specializing in neuroanatomy. When he moved to South Africa in 1922, it wasn't to search for human origins. |
| 2:03.7 | I had no wish to be in Africa. I had no wish to be an anthropologist. I wanted to spend my life |
| 2:14.6 | being a neurologist learning learning something about the curious brains that people |
| 2:22.9 | have and why they act in the strange manners that they do. |
| 2:30.2 | But his mentor persuaded him to go, to help establish the anatomy department at the University of Wittwatersrand Medical School in Johannesburg. |
| 2:39.5 | It was at the time, according to Dart, the only medical school between Cape Town and Cairo. |
... |
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