tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/scientific-racism-22766/articlesScientific racism – The Conversation2023-10-18T13:48:08Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2147882023-10-18T13:48:08Z2023-10-18T13:48:08ZEvolution revolution: how a Cape Town museum exhibit is rewriting the story of humankind<p>Picture your typical human evolution museum display. You walk into a dimly lit space with glass boxes on white plinths or roped off areas. There are lots and lots of bones. Maybe a bit of history on how those bones were collected, and pictures of the famous people – usually men – who collected them. Often there are reconstructions of what these human ancestors might have looked like: dark-skinned and hairless ape-people, walking, mostly naked, holding stone tools, or even being hunted. </p>
<p>But where are <em>you</em>? How does such an exhibit show you who you are and how you came to be? We don’t think it does. So, in 2018 we were among a group of human evolution researchers who decided it was time to do things differently. The result is Humanity, a new human evolution exhibit that opened in September 2023 at <a href="https://www.iziko.org.za/museums/south-african-museum/">Iziko South African Museum</a> in Cape Town.</p>
<p>The exhibit offers a close look at the problematic history of palaeoanthropology; it also attempts to decolonise the story of human origins. To do so, it looks at how human evolution has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/science-and-race-in-south-africa-lessons-from-old-bones-in-boxes-179774">portrayed in the past</a>, in ways that reinforce western biases and alienate and dehumanise living Africans. Then it works to remove those biases and make our understanding of human evolution scientifically accurate, broadly relevant and inclusive. </p>
<p>This is part of a broader reckoning happening in <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-accurately-portray-histories-museums-need-to-do-more-than-reimagine-galleries-189109">museum practice globally</a>. Many institutions are reconsidering their collections and their roles as participants in colonial practice, including theft of artefacts and bodies. It is essential to consider how museums continue to alienate precisely the people who are owed reparations.</p>
<p>We learned an enormous amount while developing this exhibit, which is now a permanent fixture at the museum. Our hope is that these four central lessons could help other institutions locally and internationally to reconsider how they portray human evolution – and to understand why it matters.</p>
<h2>A learning process</h2>
<p><strong>1. Make the co-creation process as inclusive as possible:</strong></p>
<p>The Humanity exhibit was created through a collaborative process involving curators, researchers, collections managers, designers, conservators, educators, artists, heritage practitioners, community members, public participants, procurement specialists, service providers and administrators. </p>
<p>In this process, our plans changed often, when a diversity of lenses showed us where content and design missed the mark. The product is radically different from what we thought we would create. It is richer for that. </p>
<p><strong>2. Lose the “great white explorer” narrative:</strong> </p>
<p>The history of human evolution is traditionally told as a story of white male exploration and discovery. South Africans learn in school and through the media about <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/raymond-arthur-dart">Raymond Dart</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/robert-broom">Robert Broom</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/professor-emeritus-phillip-tobias">Phillip Tobias</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lee-Berger">Lee Berger</a> and other mostly foreign, English-speaking white men who are associated with important fossil discoveries in the country. </p>
<p>In contrast, we centred the exhibit’s story on the diversity of people in South Africa and how that diversity came to be. </p>
<p>This was done through portraiture, genetic testing and interviews about cultural identity to explore, through individuals, what makes them “them”. Interviewees spoke in the South African languages of their choice. This exploration of our collective humanity was used as an inroad for understanding how evolution has worked to shape us into what we are today.</p>
<p><strong>3. Own the problematic past:</strong></p>
<p>Early South African palaeoanthropologists didn’t only find fossils: they also <a href="https://theconversation.com/archaeology-is-changing-slowly-but-its-still-too-tied-up-in-colonial-practices-133243">often engaged in colonial, racist science</a>, studying and measuring living people as models for our “primitive” ancestors. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/archaeology-is-changing-slowly-but-its-still-too-tied-up-in-colonial-practices-133243">Archaeology is changing, slowly. But it's still too tied up in colonial practices</a>
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<p>Even the iconography of human evolution has racist, colonial overtones. A Google Image search for “human evolution” will turn up a trove of images depicting evolution as a line of hominins transitioning from more ape-like to more human-like. Often the earlier ones are more hunched, hairier, and darker, suggesting <a href="https://theconversation.com/comparing-black-people-to-monkeys-has-a-long-dark-simian-history-55102">a link between black bodies and primitiveness</a>, while the end product is a striding white man. </p>
<p>We put in place a number of interventions to deal with this legacy. The exhibit openly discusses race and racism, as well as the history of palaeoanthropology and institutions like Iziko Museum in propping up racist science. This is crucial because, although <a href="https://bioanth.org/about/position-statements/aapa-statement-race-and-racism-2019/">racial categories are meaningless biologically</a>, they have had adverse social effects.</p>
<p>The theme of human connection is threaded through the whole exhibit. This shows how human evolution is not linear, but rather a braided stream – a view <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=nztLth2ZCZpvVf2J&v=5Iy5mt7F_N4&feature=youtu.be">consistent with cutting-edge science</a>. It also shows how the origin of our species is pan-African, and includes <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-is-homo-sapiens-the-sole-surviving-member-of-the-human-family/">contributions from beyond Africa</a>, and how this has made humanity more variable and more resilient.</p>
<p><strong>4. Break the glass boxes:</strong></p>
<p>Probably the biggest surprise as we developed this exhibit, at least for those of us raised going to museums, was how alienating museums actually are to most people. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/museum-cultural-institution">Museums are a western notion</a>. Putting heritage objects behind glass and on pedestals in sterile spaces is not only alienating, it can be downright offensive. The Humanity exhibit does not fit traditional museum aesthetics. </p>
<p>Instead, visitors are drawn into a welcoming space enveloped in a reed structure that resembles a giant basket, or a hut, staring up at the African sky. A wall of 100 handaxes is there to be touched, as are some important fossil casts. Gone are the scientific illustrations and realistically painted past landscapes. Instead, stories are communicated using art that is familiar to everyone – photographs, videos, animations, comic strips and graffiti. </p>
<h2>Everyone’s story</h2>
<p>The story of humanity is everyone’s story. A story of migration and mixing, and adapting to new contexts. It is a story of the connection of people along the long braided stream of our shared origins. It is important that we tell it that way.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214788/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>We are grateful for the many voices and helping hands in the development of this exhibition. HUMANITY received funding from: Department of Sports, Art & Culture (DSAC); National Research Foundation (NRF) Human & Social Dynamics platform; University of Cape Town, #AdvancingWomen Grant; GENUS Centre of Excellence in Palaeosciences (CoE-Palaeo); Palaeontological Scientific Trust (PAST). European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB), and Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Ackermann does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The exhibit offers a close look at the problematic history of palaeoanthropology.Rebecca Ackermann, Professor, Department of Archaeology and Human Evolution Research Institute, University of Cape TownWendy Black, Chief Curator of Art & Social History, Iziko Museums of South AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2138182023-09-22T13:11:26Z2023-09-22T13:11:26ZSouth African hominin fossils were sent into space and scientists are enraged<p><em>When a Virgin Galactic commercial flight soared into space on 8 September 2023, there were two Virgin Galactic pilots, an instructor and three passengers on board – as well as two fossils of ancient prehuman relatives from South Africa. Timothy Nash, a businessman, carried a clavicle belonging to Australopithecus sediba and the thumb bone of a Homo naledi specimen. The fossils’ brief journey – the VSS Unity’s flight lasted just an hour – was organised by palaeontologist Lee Berger, who led the team that discovered and described Homo naledi in 2015. Berger was granted an export permit in July by the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) to take the fossils from the country to the US launch site for VSS Unity. <a href="https://www.sahra.org.za/about/">SAHRA is a</a> “national administrative body responsible for the protection of South Africa’s cultural heritage”.</em></p>
<p><em>The event has <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02882-1">drawn the ire</a> of scores of human evolution researchers from South Africa and beyond. Some have <a href="https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-africa-south-2023-9-scientists-slam-pr-stunt-that-sent-hominin-fossils-into-space/">labelled it</a> “unethical” and a “publicity stunt”. Berger issued <a href="https://twitter.com/LeeRberger/status/1706277191762231582">a brief statement</a> on X (formerly Twitter) on 25 September addressing the situation. And SAHRA, in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02882-1">a statement</a> quoted by Nature, said it was “satisfied that the promotional benefit derived was appropriately weighted against the inherent risk of travel of this nature”.</em></p>
<p><em>The Conversation Africa asked Dipuo Winnie Kgotleng, <a href="https://www.uj.ac.za/faculties/humanities/research/research-centres/palaeo-research-institute/">director of the Palaeo-Research Institute</a> at the University of Johannesburg, and Robyn Pickering, co-director of the <a href="https://www.heriuct.co.za/">Human Evolution Research Institute</a> at the University of Cape Town, why the space flight created such unhappiness.</em></p>
<h2>Why are scientists so angry about the fossils being sent to space?</h2>
<p>There are a number of reasons. </p>
<p>One is the threat to South African heritage. According to the <a href="https://sahris.sahra.org.za/sites/default/files/website/articledocs/Archaeology%20Permit%20Policy_April2016_Approved.pdf">SAHRA permitting policy</a>, fossils of this nature are only allowed to travel for scientific purposes and should be securely packed to prevent damage. The fossils travelled in space in a sealed tube – and were then kept in an individual’s pocket as he floated freely.</p>
<p>There is no scientific reason for allowing these fossils to travel to space. No new knowledge has been generated and no community, either local or international, has been engaged on this science. </p>
<p>Also, doses of radiation which these specimens were exposed to during this trip could have potentially permanently altered the fossil microstructure, affecting any data which might be required in the future. </p>
<p>A second issue is that the <em>A. sediba</em> clavicle is a type specimen: it is the original physical example of the species and, if such a specimen is lost or destroyed, it is gone forever.</p>
<p>Finally, this event demonstrated the unequal power relations at play in accessing this invaluable heritage. Some local communities – like the people of Taung, where a 2.8 million year old child’s skull <a href="https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/fossils/taung-child">nicknamed the Taung Child</a> was discovered in 1924 – have <a href="https://sundayworld.co.za/news/locals-want-taung-skull-returned-home/">requested access</a> to fossil specimens that originated from their areas. In the case of the Taung Child, there have <a href="https://sundayworld.co.za/news/locals-want-taung-skull-returned-home/">reportedly been discussions</a> “over a long time” to have the skull returned by the university where it is stored.</p>
<p>So, is it only wealthy, famous rich white men who can have access to fossils? Poor communities do not have access to the same privileges?</p>
<h2>Professor Berger’s SAHRA application <a href="https://sahris.sahra.org.za/node/620113">called</a> the fossils’ space flight a ‘once in a lifetime opportunity to bring awareness to science, exploration, human origins and South Africa and its role in understanding Humankind’s shared African ancestry’.</h2>
<p>We completely disagree. Which community has been engaged in science awareness? Surely no South African or any African community has been engaged through this act?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/science-and-race-in-south-africa-lessons-from-old-bones-in-boxes-179774">Science and race in South Africa: lessons from 'old bones in boxes'</a>
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<h2>Some have argued that the space flight echoes colonial attitudes to human remains. How so?</h2>
<p>This is an example of what we <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-022-01010-4">call</a> <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1022374703178">neo-colonialism</a>. The <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/darwins-hunch-science-race-and-the-search-for-human-origins/">science of human evolution has a long</a>, dark past of exploitation and extraction. The main perpetrators of this past were privileged white men, so this latest event feels familiar but is really not OK in 2023. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/archaeology-is-changing-slowly-but-its-still-too-tied-up-in-colonial-practices-133243">Archaeology is changing, slowly. But it's still too tied up in colonial practices</a>
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<p>Our field is just beginning to grapple with its past, and we’ve made <a href="https://www.heriuct.co.za/news-content/celebrating-5-years-of-advancing-womxn">some progress</a> in the last decade. Something like this puts us right back into the olden days.</p>
<h2>So what happens next?</h2>
<p>Several professional bodies in various African regions have <a href="https://eaappinfo.wordpress.com/">issued statements</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/SASQUA1/status/1702245012472205761/photo/1">expressing</a> their unhappiness about the treatment of the fossils. </p>
<p>Various arms of the palaeoscience community, such as the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=301773955808321&set=a.159433826709002">Association of Southern African Professional Archaeologists</a>, have directly asked SAHRA and the Cradle of Humankind Management Authority (which is responsible for preserving the world heritage site where the fossils were found) and the government to address us and the South African public more broadly. </p>
<p>We are also pushing for these organisations to reflect on this issue and to discuss changes to their permitting policy. We’re confident that the outrage we’ve demonstrated will guard against something like this happening again in the future.</p>
<p>September is Heritage Month in South Africa, a time when we are asked to come together as a country, to celebrate, learn about and explore our heritage as a way to build unity in a diverse society. Our common heritage, represented by the fossils, is a great tool for bringing us together as a country. Treating the same fossils in this way goes against this noble aim.</p>
<p><em>This article was updated on 27 September to add Professor Lee Berger’s <a href="https://twitter.com/LeeRberger/status/1706277191762231582">statement</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213818/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dipuo Winnie Kgotleng has received funding from the Wenner-Gren foundation, National Heritage Council and National Research Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robyn Pickering receives funding from The University of Cape Town, the National Research Foundation (NRF) and the DSI Centre of Excellence in Palaeosciences/GENUS</span></em></p>Experts insist there is no scientific reason for allowing these fossils to travel to space.Dipuo Winnie Kgotleng, Director, University of JohannesburgRobyn Pickering, Senior lecturer, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2075512023-07-13T15:25:19Z2023-07-13T15:25:19ZSan and Khoe skeletons: how a South African university sought to restore dignity and redress the past<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536517/original/file-20230710-23-mw77lw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=21%2C144%2C2326%2C2008&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A facial reconstruction of one of the Sutherland Nine, a woman named Saartje.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reconstruction by Dr Kathryn Smith/Professor Caroline Wilkinson</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It has been nearly 100 years since the skeletonised remains of nine people were removed from their graves on a farm near the town of Sutherland in South Africa’s Northern Cape province. They were donated to the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) anatomy department by Carel Gert Coetzee, who had unearthed them and was a medical student at the university.</p>
<p>The remains belonged to <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/khoisan">San and Khoekhoe people</a>, two groups indigenous to South Africa. Their families were not consulted about the removal and donation. </p>
<p>This, sadly, was not unusual for the time. Anatomy departments and museums around the world <a href="http://www.northern-cape.gov.za/index.php/component/content/article?id=769:reburial-of-mr-and-mrs-klaas-and-trooi-pienaar">collected</a> human skeletal remains during the colonial era and into the first half of the 20th century. They were displayed in museums or studied for scientific purposes, often with <a href="https://theconversation.com/science-and-race-in-south-africa-lessons-from-old-bones-in-boxes-179774">a racial lens</a> depicting indigenous people as primitive and inferior. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/science-and-race-in-south-africa-lessons-from-old-bones-in-boxes-179774">Science and race in South Africa: lessons from 'old bones in boxes'</a>
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<p>I am an associate professor in what is today the Division of Clinical Anatomy and Biological Anthropology. In 2017, after encouragement by other museums and universities in South Africa, I completed an archival record review with the aim to identify remains that had been unethically obtained. That was when I came across the Sutherland collection; and immediately realised that, as UCT, we had a moral and ethical duty to return them to their community. </p>
<p>A public participation advisor Doreen Februarie was appointed to approach the community. Myself and UCT’s senior leadership represented by DVC Professor Loretta Feris thought they would merely request the return of the remains for reburial. They did – but first, the descendent families asked the university to study the remains with a view to learning more about their ancestors’ lives. </p>
<p>We recently <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284785">presented</a> those research results in a single, large, multi-authored publication. </p>
<p>We traced historical records, conducted archaeological field work, analysed the physical remains and conducted biomolecular analyses. Facial reconstructions were completed for eight of the nine people – now known as the Sutherland Nine. </p>
<p>The Sutherland example may set a global precedent for a process of restitution and restorative justice in combination with community-driven science. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197607695.013.29?">My hope</a> is that more curators and custodians of human skeletal remains elsewhere in the world will attempt to redress some of the wrongs of the past.</p>
<h2>Beginning the process</h2>
<p>To ensure that we reached the right people in Sutherland, a public participation advisor was chosen to lead a process with the community. By then, I had studied the archival records related to the donation; these revealed names and two surnames. The community elected those carrying the same surnames as their representatives.</p>
<p>People were shocked and dismayed at the situation. But they also wanted to know who the nine had been and how their remains came to be at the university. </p>
<p>Our answers were limited. When I realised in 2017 that they had been unethically obtained, the department placed a moratorium on studying them. The community requested that this be lifted: they wanted the remains studied to understand the people and the situation. Once this was done they wanted the remains returned so the nine could be reburied properly. </p>
<p>As our research unfolded, we decided to present the results in a single publication. The more common approach would have been to publish several individual papers, focusing on the science. We decided instead to tell the story of the Nine with science as the background. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-scholars-have-created-global-guidelines-for-ancient-dna-research-169284">Why scholars have created global guidelines for ancient DNA research</a>
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<p>We obtained informed consent from the community at every step of the process. The family members wrote in their own words what research they wanted and why, along with their restrictions on data use. For instance, they didn’t want any photos of the actual bones to be published – only digital renderings could be used. They also asked that the DNA sequences obtained from each of the Nine be kept private after scientific verification through peer review. And if anyone wants to conduct future research they must approach the families to begin a new process. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536520/original/file-20230710-21-2lt3b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536520/original/file-20230710-21-2lt3b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536520/original/file-20230710-21-2lt3b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536520/original/file-20230710-21-2lt3b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536520/original/file-20230710-21-2lt3b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536520/original/file-20230710-21-2lt3b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536520/original/file-20230710-21-2lt3b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536520/original/file-20230710-21-2lt3b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Members of the descendent community viewing the facial reconstructions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Je’nine May</span></span>
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<p>The families of the nine were also asked whether they wanted to be listed as authors in the eventual publications. Collectively, they chose formal acknowledgement in lieu of authorship. </p>
<h2>Hard lives</h2>
<p>It is impossible to summarise all our research findings here. Overall, though, we found that life was physically hard and violent for the Sutherland Nine. One died as recently as 1913; the remaining seven died in the 1870s or 1880s. </p>
<p>When the late professor of anatomy MR Drennan took delivery of the remains in the 1920s, he also noted what little the donor knew about the people’s lives. Most adults were identified by first names (Cornelius, Klaas, Saartje, Jannetje, Voetje, Totje). For two, surnames were also specified – Cornelius Abraham and Klaas Stuurman. </p>
<p>The descendent families have collaborated with the National San Council to rename the unnamed individuals.</p>
<p>The younger boy child (four to six years of age) has been named G!ae, from the N/uu language; it translates to “springbok” – an animal symbolising the San’s pride in their culture and future prosperity. The older girl child (six to eight years of age) has been named Saa, which translates to “eland”, a sacred and spiritual animal in San culture. </p>
<p>The ninth individual did not live at the same time as the others. He was an unnamed adult said by the donor to have been buried 40 years earlier near Sutherland, although the precise burial location was unrecorded. <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284785">We used</a> radiocarbon dating to show that he actually died about 700 years ago.</p>
<p>There is no evidence that this individual was directly related to the other eight, but his remains came to the institution from the same donor. He has been named Igue We, meaning “blessing”, to symbolise acceptance and blessing by San ancestors for his reburial. </p>
<h2>Painful legacy</h2>
<p>The principal message of this collaborative approach is how community-driven research can benefit processes of restitution when grappling with painful legacy collections. </p>
<p>The reburial of the remains in Sutherland is likely to take place later this year, though no date has yet been set.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207551/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Victoria Gibbon receives funding from the National Research Foundation of South Africa and for this research also from National Geographic.</span></em></p>Hopefully more curators and custodians of repositories of human skeletal remains will attempt to redress some of the wrongs of the past.Victoria Gibbon, Associate Professor in Biological Anthropology, Division of Clinical Anatomy and Biological Anthropology, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2020112023-04-05T12:24:51Z2023-04-05T12:24:51ZRacist and sexist depictions of human evolution still permeate science, education and popular culture today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518818/original/file-20230331-1042-s84ty.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2048%2C1367&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Human evolution is typically depicted with a progressive whitening of the skin, despite a lack of evidence to support it.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stone_age_by_Vasnetsov_01.jpg">Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Systemic racism and sexism have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70401-2">permeated civilization</a> since the rise of agriculture, when people started living in one place for a long time. Early Western scientists, such as Aristotle in ancient Greece, were indoctrinated with the <a href="http://www.beacon.org/Superior-P1495.aspx">ethnocentric</a> and <a href="https://www.akpress.org/a-brief-history-of-misogyny.html">misogynistic</a> narratives that permeated their society. More than 2,000 years after Aristotle’s writings, <a href="http://www.beacon.org/Inferior-P1278.aspx">English naturalist Charles Darwin</a> also extrapolated the sexist and racist narratives he heard and read in his youth to the natural world. </p>
<p>Darwin presented his biased views as scientific facts, such as in his 1871 book “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/39301709">The Descent of Man</a>,” where he described his belief that men are evolutionarily superior to women, Europeans superior to non-Europeans and hierarchical civilizations superior to small egalitarian societies. In that book, which <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-darwins-descent-man-holds-150-years-after-publication-180977091/">continues to be studied</a> in schools and natural history museums, he considered “the hideous ornaments and the equally hideous music admired by most savages” to be “not so highly developed as in certain animals, for instance, in birds,” and compared the appearance of Africans to the New World monkey <em>Pithecia satanas</em>.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Science isn’t immune to sexism and racism.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“The Descent of Man” was published during a moment of societal turmoil in continental Europe. In France, the working class <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Commune-of-Paris-1871">Paris Commune</a> took to the streets asking for radical social change, including the overturning of societal hierarchies. Darwin’s claims that the subjugation of the poor, non-Europeans and women was the natural result of evolutionary progress were music to the ears of the elites and those in power within academia. Science historian <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=OCG87poAAAAJ&hl=en">Janet Browne</a> wrote that Darwin’s <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691114392/charles-darwin">meteoric rise within Victorian society</a> did not occur despite his racist and sexist writings but in great part because of them. </p>
<p>It is not coincidence that Darwin had a state funeral in Westminster Abbey, an honor emblematic of English power, and was <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/darwin/oclc/644948405">publicly commemorated</a> as a symbol of “English success in conquering nature and civilizing the globe during Victoria’s long reign.” </p>
<p>Despite the significant societal changes that have occurred in the last 150 years, sexist and racist narratives are still common in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21978">science, medicine and education</a>. As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=sOat2IwAAAAJ&hl=en">teacher and researcher</a> at Howard University, I am interested in combining my main fields of study, <a href="https://www.ruidiogolab.org/">biology and anthropology</a>, to discuss broader societal issues. In research I recently published with my colleague <a href="https://profiles.howard.edu/fatimah-jackson">Fatimah Jackson</a> and three medical students at Howard University, we show how racist and sexist narratives are not a thing of the past: They are still present in scientific papers, textbooks, museums and educational materials.</p>
<h2>From museums to scientific papers</h2>
<p>One example of how biased narratives are still present in science today is the numerous depictions of human evolution as a linear trend from darker and more “primitive” human beings to more “evolved” ones with a lighter skin tone. Natural history <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/john-gurche-shaping-humanity/1836128.html">museums</a>, <a href="https://medium.com/paperkin/where-is-evolution-taking-the-human-race-6ddaf7eaddba">websites</a> and <a href="https://theculturetrip.com/africa/south-africa/articles/what-south-africas-caves-can-tell-you-about-humankind/">UNESCO heritage sites</a> have all shown this trend.</p>
<p>The fact that such depictions are not scientifically accurate does not discourage their continued circulation. <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/video/15-countries-largest-white-population-195712421.html">Roughly 11%</a> of people living today are “white,” or European descendants. Images showing a linear progression to whiteness do not accurately represent either human evolution or what living humans look like today, as a whole. Furthermore, there is no scientific evidence supporting a progressive skin whitening. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.24564">Lighter skin pigmentation</a> chiefly evolved within just a few groups that migrated to non-African regions with high or low latitudes, such as the northern regions of America, Europe and Asia.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Illustrations of human evolution tend to depict progressive skin whitening.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sexist narratives also still permeate academia. For example, in a 2021 paper on a famous early human fossil <a href="https://doi.org/10.4436/jass.99001">found in the Sierra de Atapuerca</a> archaeological site in Spain, researchers examined the canine teeth of the remains and found that it was actually that of a girl between 9 and 11 years old. It was previously believed that the fossil was a boy due to a popular 2002 book by one of the authors of that paper, paleoanthropologist <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5nDp-kIAAAAJ">José María Bermúdez de Castro</a>. What is particularly telling is that the study authors recognized that there was no scientific reason for the fossil remains to have been designated as a male in the first place. The decision, they wrote, “<a href="https://newsrnd.com/news/2021-03-16-%0A---the-boy-from-the-gran-dolina-was-actually-a-girl%0A--.Skx4GEFC7u.html">arose randomly</a>.”</p>
<p>But these choices are not truly “random.” Depictions of human evolution <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801435492/ancestral-images/">frequently only show men</a>. In the few cases where women are depicted, they tend to be shown as passive mothers, not as active inventors, cave painters or food gatherers, despite available anthropological data showing that <a href="http://www.beacon.org/Inferior-P1278.aspx">pre-historical women were all those things</a>.</p>
<p>Another example of sexist narratives in science is how researchers continue to discuss the “puzzling” <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/jez.b.22690">evolution of the female orgasm</a>. Darwin <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70401-2">constructed narratives</a> about how women were evolutionarily “coy” and sexually passive, even though he acknowledged that females actively select their sexual partners in most mammalian species. As a Victorian, it was difficult for him to accept that women could play an active part in choosing a partner, so he argued that such roles only applied to women in early human evolution. According to Darwin, men later began to sexually select women.</p>
<p>Sexist narratives about women being more “coy” and “less sexual,” including the idea of the female orgasm as an evolutionary puzzle, <a href="https://www.iflscience.com/female-orgasms-are-not-puzzling-enigmas--43486">are contradicted</a> by a wide range of evidence. For instance, women are the ones who actually more frequently experience <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2020.1743224">multiple orgasms</a> as well as more <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00224490209552129">complex, elaborate and intense orgasms</a> on average, compared to men. Women are not biologically less sexual, but <a href="https://theconversation.com/data-should-smash-the-biological-myth-of-promiscuous-males-and-sexually-coy-females-59665">sexist stereotypes</a> were accepted as scientific fact.</p>
<h2>The vicious cycle of systemic racism and sexism</h2>
<p>Educational materials, including textbooks and anatomical atlases used by science and medical students, play a crucial role in perpetuating biased narratives. For example, the 2017 edition of “<a href="https://evolve.elsevier.com/cs/product/9780323547086?role=student">Netter Atlas of Human Anatomy</a>,” commonly used by medical students and clinical professionals, includes about 180 figures that show skin color. Of those, the vast majority show male individuals with white skin, and only two show individuals with “darker” skin. This perpetuates the depiction of white men as the anatomical prototype of the human species and fails to display the full anatomical diversity of people.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Textbooks and educational materials can perpetuate the biases of their creators in science and society.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Authors of teaching materials for children also replicate the biases in scientific publications, museums and textbooks. For example, the cover of a 2016 coloring book entitled “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Evolution_of_Living_Things_Coloring.html?id=mOUkMQAACAAJ">The Evolution of Living Things”</a>“ shows human evolution as a linear trend from darker "primitive” creatures to a “civilized” Western man. Indoctrination comes full circle when the children using such books become scientists, journalists, museum curators, politicians, authors or illustrators.</p>
<p>One of the key characteristics of systemic racism and sexism is that it is unconsciously perpetuated by people who often don’t realize that the narratives and choices they make are biased. Academics can address long-standing racist, sexist and Western-centric biases by being both more alert and proactive in detecting and correcting these influences in their work. Allowing inaccurate narratives to continue to circulate in science, medicine, education and the media perpetuates not only these narratives in future generations, but also the discrimination, oppression and atrocities that have been <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/disturbing-resilience-scientific-racism-180972243/">justified by them in the past</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202011/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rui Diogo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From Aristotle to Darwin, inaccurate and biased narratives in science not only reproduce these biases in future generations but also perpetuate the discrimination they are used to justify.Rui Diogo, Associate Professor of Anatomy, Howard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1797742022-03-24T14:25:09Z2022-03-24T14:25:09ZScience and race in South Africa: lessons from ‘old bones in boxes’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453535/original/file-20220322-302-1hjvrou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anatomist and anthropologist Matthew Drennan in his anthropology laboratory at the University of Cape Town in 1931.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cape Argus, 27 August 1931</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The discipline of physical anthropology has a dark, often fraught past. It was misused to justify slavery and even genocide. In this edited extract from the introduction of his new book, <a href="https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/bones-and-bodies/">Bones and Bodies: How South African Scientists Studied Race</a> (Wits University Press, 2022), Alan G. Morris examines the discipline’s South African history. He points out that modern academics struggle to find ways <a href="https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/108710">to balance the roles of sociology and genetics</a> in their research – and that understanding how scientists previously understood the relationship between social and physical characteristics will guide them in navigating this tricky balance.</em> </p>
<p>The aphorism first spoken by the American philosopher <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/santayana/">George Santayana</a> (and paraphrased by Winston Churchill) is especially true for physical anthropology: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The subject’s past is not a pleasant one. Physical anthropology is the branch of anthropology that considers the structure and evolution of the human body. It has been used to <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33372273/">justify slavery</a>, condemn criminals by <a href="https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1062&context=histsp">their appearance</a> and <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.4159/harvard.9780674736160.c8/pdf">limit immigration</a> according to racial origin. In Nazi Germany it was used <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/collections/bibliography/nazi-racial-science">to commit genocide</a>. </p>
<p>Over the years, South African physical anthropologists have written a great deal about the peoples of southern Africa. Those of us in this field need to ask if these publications have contributed to the country’s own social heresies. That, of course, will be the task of historians. But we need to be aware that the old problems continue to surface all over the world. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453537/original/file-20220322-28-1tyvud6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453537/original/file-20220322-28-1tyvud6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453537/original/file-20220322-28-1tyvud6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453537/original/file-20220322-28-1tyvud6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453537/original/file-20220322-28-1tyvud6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453537/original/file-20220322-28-1tyvud6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453537/original/file-20220322-28-1tyvud6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/the-real-problem-with-charles-murray-and-the-bell-curve/">Publications</a> in the 1990s tried to resurrect <a href="https://www.psychology.uwo.ca/people/faculty/remembrance/rushton.html">biological racism</a> by stratifying levels of intelligence by race. These are aberrations that have triggered heated responses from professional physical anthropologists. But in the eyes of the public such ideas do have legitimacy. </p>
<p>In the South African context, despite having vanquished the apartheid dragon, we need to understand exactly how much of the racist underpinnings of the policy have become internalised and are still part of us.</p>
<h2>Anatomists and anthropologists</h2>
<p><a href="https://journals.openedition.org/primatologie/2708">Anthropological discoveries</a> in South Africa over the past century have been of exceptional importance in terms of our understanding of human evolution. These discoveries have also influenced society in ways that have not always been positive. </p>
<p>Anatomists in the medical schools have most influenced our understanding of human structure and variation. Their racial classifications and descriptions of the peoples of southern Africa have flowed into and still affect medical specialities, including surgery, gynaecology, forensics, genetics and epidemiology/public health. </p>
<p>The same anatomists who have dabbled in physical anthropology have also taught racial variation to generations of undergraduate and postgraduate medical students. My choice of the word “dabbled” is intentional. None of these scholars were trained in the discipline of anthropology. Yet generations of researchers in medical, natural and social sciences have used the subject’s classifications and categories.</p>
<p>My training and my career are overwhelmingly in physical anthropology, not history. My <a href="https://digitalcollections.lib.uct.ac.za/osteological-analysis-protohistoric-populations-northern-cape-and-western-orange-free-state-south-0">doctoral thesis</a> examined a series of archaeologically derived human skeletons from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. They were excavated from locations along the historical border of what was then South Africa’s Northern Cape Colony. </p>
<p>To make sense of the skeletal variation seen in the archaeological skeletons, I needed to find modern skeletons from related populations for comparison. It became obvious that the skeletons accessioned in many museum and medical school collections were not identified on the basis of known self-defined ethnicity. They were lodged there as racial types determined by the collections’ accumulators and managers. </p>
<p>Many of the skeletons of people who had been known in life were labelled according to a strict racial typology. Racial identity was based on appearance, not the culture nor the community from which he or she originated. This opened the world of skeleton collecting to me and brought a context to the old bones in the boxes. Something that had started as a search for ethnically identified skeletons grew into a much larger project looking at the origins of the collections themselves. </p>
<p>It became apparent just how involved the physical anthropologists were as collectors and how ingrained their method of typology had become in the collection and description of “specimens” and in their publications.</p>
<h2>Anthropological vignettes</h2>
<p>I joined the Department of Anatomy at the University of Cape Town in 1981. I took on the unofficial role of department historian, especially with respect to things anthropological. This included storing boxes of old correspondence, lantern slides and old articles. Sorting through these had to wait until my retirement approached in 2014. Retiring gave me the opportunity to begin to put more than 30 years of <a href="https://scholar.google.co.za/citations?user=VY15b7QAAAAJ&hl=en">my research</a> together. It was also a chance to try to organise the historical material stored in the boxes in my office and around the department. </p>
<p>The organisation of the collection provided the opportunity for me to tackle a final historical task: writing a single volume that would encompass this wealth of unpublished material.</p>
<p><a href="https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/bones-and-bodies/">Bones and Bodies: How South African Scientists Studied Race</a> is the outcome. This book consists of eight anthropological vignettes. Each examines specific researchers or topics that had a special impact on South African physical anthropology.</p>
<p>The first chapters focus on the early researchers in South Africa’s museums and newly opened medical schools. <a href="https://unsm-ento.unl.edu/workers/LPeringuey.htm">Louis Péringuey</a> and <a href="https://www.s2a3.org.za/bio/Biograph_final.php?serial=937">Frederick FitzSimons</a> began the collection of human skeletons that would be used to describe the prehistoric peoples of South Africa. <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335291745_The_anatomical_and_anthropological_wayfaring_of_Matthew_Robertson_Drennan_1885-1965">Matthew Drennan</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/raymond-arthur-dart">Raymond Dart</a> provided the professional anatomical expertise which would define the “age of typology”. It saw both living and ancient peoples placed in distinct racial categories. </p>
<p>The break with the rigid racial hierarchies came about in the 1950s and 1960s. This, under the leadership of Ronald Singer in Cape Town and Phillip Tobias in Johannesburg. The arrival of the “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23736836">new physical anthropology</a>” on South African shores is intimately connected with these two researchers. It created a new dynamic in scientific approach exactly at the time when the policy of apartheid was being implemented. </p>
<p>The last two chapters look at the implementation of apartheid and how the creation of racial types in the first half of the 20th century not only misdirected archaeology but also gave legitimacy to <a href="https://www.apartheidmuseum.org/exhibitions/race-classification">apartheid’s classification system</a>. Scientists themselves seemed to be unaware that their lack of comment on the absurdity of apartheid was a statement in itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179774/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan G Morris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Scientists themselves seemed to be unaware that their lack of comment on the absurdity of apartheid was a statement in itself.Alan G Morris, Professor of Biological Anthropology, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1756692022-02-10T14:06:11Z2022-02-10T14:06:11ZNew book examines how science and tech shaped South African history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443392/original/file-20220131-116247-1iabj0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In the nineteenth century, improved breeds and new agricultural technology underpinned exports of ostrich feathers from South Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">powerofforever/iStock/Getty Images Plus</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As historians, we have both been immersed for many years in trying to understand and write about South Africa’s complex, conflictual history. Conquest, colonial domination and racial division in the shape of apartheid played a central role. So too did the rise of black opposition and the transition in 1994 to an African National Congress government. </p>
<p>There were many strands in the weaving of this history, some neglected in the focus on race and political power. These include the profound role that science and technology played in shaping South Africa’s history. In our new book, <em><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/scientific-imagination-in-south-africa/C9AB3AC018116772C2DC3E5B801C8B06">The Scientific Imagination in South Africa, 1700 to the Present</a></em>, we offer a historical overview of scientific ideas, practices and institutions in South Africa over more than three centuries.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442659/original/file-20220126-19-12jy4it.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/442659/original/file-20220126-19-12jy4it.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442659/original/file-20220126-19-12jy4it.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442659/original/file-20220126-19-12jy4it.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442659/original/file-20220126-19-12jy4it.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442659/original/file-20220126-19-12jy4it.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/442659/original/file-20220126-19-12jy4it.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cambridge University Press</span></span>
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<p>We refer in the title to the “scientific imagination”. That’s because we link science both with power and with ideas about how human society can be reshaped. We also aim to discuss science as an expression of human curiosity, ingenuity, and the ability to make unlikely connections. </p>
<p>This book is a history of individuals, ideas and institutions that were at the fulcrum of important scientific developments. Writing history is bounded by what has happened. Our text explores the complexity of the colonial era and its indelible legacies. We argue that science and technology both facilitated colonialism and to some degree stood outside such processes. </p>
<p>Racial policies and modernist approaches privileged the narratives of formal, written, largely disciplinary-based sciences. The book incorporates discussion of indigenous and local knowledge when it fed into scientific discussion, such as in understanding the local environment in the eighteenth century. We also explore alternative approaches and <a href="https://ourconstitution.constitutionhill.org.za/speaking-truth-to-power/">conflicts over knowledge</a>. </p>
<h2>Innovation testing ground</h2>
<p>South Africa has been a regional rather than a world power. In global terms it was not a major centre for invention. Yet its geographic position at the southern foot of the African continent made it a staging post for Portuguese, Dutch and British maritime empires. It became part of an expanded European and global imaginary. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Cape-Colony">Colonisation by Britain from 1806</a> brought the region into tight connection with one of the most powerful – and technologically advanced – world empires.</p>
<p>From the late eighteenth century, the Cape became an important site for botanical and zoological exploration. The wealth of its plant species, as well as the extraordinary diversity of wildlife, attracted sustained attention. By the early twentieth century, the discovery of ancient fossils, stone implements and hominin remains suggested that the country may have constituted a <a href="https://www.maropeng.co.za/content/page/introduction-to-your-visit-to-the-cradle-of-humankind-world-heritage-site">“cradle” of modern human evolution</a>.</p>
<p>South Africa was not a core zone of invention. But it was, at key moments, a significant incubator and testing ground of innovation. Application could be as important as discovery. In the nineteenth century, improved breeds and new agricultural technology, including dams, wells, fodder and fencing, underpinned exports of wool and ostrich feathers. Devastating new rifles helped to change the balance of power in favour of colonial regimes. </p>
<p>In the twentieth century the mineral revolution necessitated developments in applied geology and the chemistry of gold extraction. The scientific imagination was also more exploratory in curiosity-driven fields such as astronomy, palaeontology, and wildlife conservation.</p>
<p>Our text also builds on many individual stories. <a href="https://www.history.com/news/the-extraordinary-secret-life-of-dr-james-barry">James Barry</a>, who came to the Cape in the 1810s, was probably the first formally trained woman doctor in Britain. She made a significant contribution to modernising Cape Town’s early medical institutions. She also performed one of the first successful Caesarean operations in the British empire, for an ancestor of the man who became the first Afrikaner nationalist Prime Minister. It was in commemoration of this operation that he carried the unusual name <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/james-barry-munnik-hertzog">James Barry Munnik Hertzog</a>.</p>
<p>Elsewhere in South Africa, rich mineral resources gave impetus to a sequence of discoveries. Hans Merensky, son of a German missionary, was sent to train as a geologist in Prussia. Returning to South Africa, he played a major role in identifying coastal diamond deposits, as well as platinum, and phosphates. Platinum group minerals have outstripped gold in their value. Merensky invested his wealth in a farm, Westfalia, which became an important site for scientific work in improving avocado pears. </p>
<h2>Thinking creatively</h2>
<p>South Africa gave birth both to Afrikaner and African nationalism, which affected the trajectory of scientific endeavour. White South Africans were also carriers of a darker tradition – the attempts to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/za/academic/subjects/history/history-ideas-and-intellectual-history/scientific-racism-modern-south-africa?format=PB&isbn=9780521479073">justify racial segregation in scientific terms</a>. In the relatively brief era of African nationalist rule after 1994, the state has espoused more universalist goals and the segregationist drive to account for racial difference has yielded to an emphasis on common humankind.</p>
<p>We explore the circulation of ideas, recognising that many originate in the north but are not trapped in the social context of their origin. Scientific ideas are potentially universal and can be appropriated and modified everywhere. </p>
<p>Today, it is clear that scientific work in multiple sites with diverse backing is important for South Africa to address its socio-economic and environmental problems. There are signs that its scientists are up to the challenge: after all, it was in South Africa that the Omicron variant of COVID was first identified. Scientists were sufficiently inserted in global networks to identify this variant and sufficiently open to publicise it. </p>
<p>The scientific imagination needs to be nurtured in the country, along with the capacity to think creatively about history and society.</p>
<p><em>The Scientific Imagination in South Africa, 1700 to the Present, is published by Cambridge University Press (2021).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175669/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This book is a history of individuals, ideas and institutions that were at the fulcrum of important scientific developments.William Beinart, Professor, University of OxfordSaul Dubow, Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1565582021-03-24T12:26:56Z2021-03-24T12:26:56ZUS museums hold the remains of thousands of Black people<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391268/original/file-20210323-19-88tz9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5300%2C3765&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Museums across the U.S., including at Harvard University, collected human remains, which were often displayed to the public.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-exterior-photograph-in-near-profile-view-of-agassiz-news-photo/513864946">Smith Collection/Gado/Archive Photos via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Among the human remains in Harvard University’s museum collections are those of 15 people who were probably enslaved African American people. Earlier this year, the school announced a new committee that will conduct a comprehensive survey of Harvard’s collections, develop new policies and propose ways to memorialize and repatriate the remains.</p>
<p>“We must begin to confront the reality of a past in which <a href="https://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2021/steering-committee-on-human-remains-in-harvard-museum-collections/">academic curiosity and opportunity overwhelmed humanity</a>,” wrote Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow.</p>
<p>This dehumanizing history of collecting African American bodies as scientific specimens is not a problem just at Harvard. On April 12, 2021, The <a href="https://whyy.org/articles/penn-museum-to-repatriate-skulls-of-black-americans-and-slaves-from-cuba/">University of Pennsylvania announced</a> that its anthropology museum will return the skulls of 55 enslaved people from Cuba and the U.S. to their communities of origin for burial. And it apologized for possessing the remains, part of its <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/us/Penn-museum-slavery-skulls-Morton-cranial.html">collection of 1,300 human skulls</a>, which were historically <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2007008">used to denigrate</a> the intelligence and character of Black people and Native Americans.</p>
<p>Other institutions have far more Black skeletons in their closets. <a href="https://core.tdar.org/document/434603/african-americans-and-nagpra-the-call-for-an-african-american-graves-protection-and-repatriation-act">By one estimate</a>, the Smithsonian Institution, Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Howard University hold the remains of some 2,000 African Americans among them. The total only increases when considering museums with remains from <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-troubling-origins-of-the-skeletons-in-a-new-york-museum">other populations</a> across the African diaspora. How many more sets of remains lie in museum storerooms across the United States, and whether or not they were collected with consent, is unknown.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=FFy5tMUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">As archaeologists</a>, <a href="https://www.american.edu/profiles/students/dj6541a.cfm">we understand</a> the impulse to gather human remains to tell our human story. Osteobiographies, life histories constructed from skeletal remains, can offer insights into nutritional, migratory, pathological and even political-economic <a href="https://doi.org/10.5744/bi.2019.1007">conditions of past populations</a>. However, scholars and activists across the U.S. are now seeking to recognize and redress the deep history of violence against Black bodies. Museums and society are finally confronting how the desires of science have at times eclipsed the demands of human rights.</p>
<p>How did the remains of so many Black people end up in collections, and what can be done about it?</p>
<h2>Collecting Black bodies</h2>
<p>The abuse and circulation of African American human remains for research dates back at least to 1763, with the dissection of corpses of the enslaved for the <a href="https://columbiaandslavery.columbia.edu/content/college-physicians-and-surgeons">first anatomy lecture</a> in the American Colonies.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="chest up portrait of Samuel Morton" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391209/original/file-20210323-22-f9t6so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">American physician and naturalist Samuel Morton (1799-1861) collected human remains for pseudoscientific study.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/samuel-george-morton-american-physician-and-naturalist-news-photo/3239062">Hulton Archive/Archive Photos via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The systematic collection of African American remains, as well as those of people from other marginalized communities, began with the work of <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/samuel-morton">Samuel George Morton</a>. Considered the founder of American physical anthropology, Morton professionalized the acquisition of human remains in the name of scientific practice and education.</p>
<p>Morton boasted the first collection of human remains, at one point considered to be the <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo5820708.html">largest globally</a>. He used its subjects-turned-specimens to promote racist hierarchies through pseudoscientific interpretations of cranial measurements. His research resulted in his 1839 magnum opus, “<a href="http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/60411930R">Crania Americana</a>,” replete with hundreds of hand-drawn images of skulls and faulty-logic racial categorization.</p>
<p>His collection eventually ended up at the University of Pennsylvania. Only last year did the university <a href="https://www.thedp.com/article/2020/07/penn-museum-morton-cranial-collection-black-lives-matter">officially announce the collection</a> had been removed from a shelved display within an archaeology classroom. </p>
<p>The impact of Morton’s collection and career ricocheted far and wide, laying the foundation for unethical practices built on the theft, transportation and accumulation of human remains – especially of those most marginalized. Collecting <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-museums-rushed-fill-their-rooms-bones-180958424/">surged during the time of the Civil War</a>. From the late 19th century well into the 20th, <a href="https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/161946">skeletal collections in museums across the country</a> skyrocketed.</p>
<p>Morton also influenced the ideology of biologist Louis Agassiz, his eventual collaborator. Agassiz founded Harvard’s <a href="https://mcz.harvard.edu/ornithology-history">Museum of Comparative Zoology</a>, which originally bore his name. His own collection practices around the photographed bodies of the enslaved have embroiled the university in <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/3/21/harvard-slavery-photo-lawsuit/">a public lawsuit</a>.</p>
<p>Institutions long embraced such collections primarily for the pseudoscientific work of justifying racial hierarchies. But they also enhanced their prestige by the number of remains in their collections that could be used for research as well as for exhibitions that fed the public’s morbid curiosity.</p>
<p>Eventually, most collecting institutions shifted away from these original goals but held on to human remains for teaching skeletal biology and testing new scientific methods. A majority of museum collections, however, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41771115">sit unused</a>, retained in the belief that they may help answer questions at some point in the future.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="woman holds historical photo of enslaved Black man" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/391283/original/file-20210323-12-afsv9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shonrael Lanier holds a photo of her ancestor, Renty, an enslaved Black man. Her family has sued Harvard University for ownership of his image. Scientists’ photos of him and others were discovered in a museum basement in the 1970s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/shonrael-lanier-a-descendant-of-former-slave-renty-taylor-news-photo/1151246352">Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ultimately, the remains of African American people, freed or enslaved, are in these collections because the captivity of their bodies, both <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/185986/medical-apartheid-by-harriet-a-washington/">living</a> and <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674660410">deceased</a>, was the very foundation of museums of medicine, anthropology, archaeology, natural history and more. While some <a href="https://decolonizingmuseums.com/">academic</a> and <a href="https://www.aam-us.org/2020/01/01/knowing-better-doing-better-the-san-diego-museum-of-man-takes-a-holistic-approach-to-decolonization/">cultural</a> institutions have taken the initiative to confront their legacies with slavery – such as <a href="https://www.museumnext.com/article/what-does-it-mean-to-decolonize-a-museum/#:%7E:text=Decolonization%20is%20part%20of%20the,include%20Native%20people%20at%20every">decolonization</a> efforts to include more diverse perspectives and values – a national effort has yet to take shape.</p>
<h2>Desecrated in life and death</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/legislation-protect-african-american-burial-grounds-passes-senate-180976642/">U.S. Senate passed</a> the African American Burial Grounds Network Act in December 2020. <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1179/text">This bill</a> would establish a voluntary network to identify and protect often at-risk African American cemeteries. The program would be administered through the National Park Service, and nothing in the legislation would apply to private property without the consent of landowners. More than 50 prominent national, state and local organizations <a href="https://www.brown.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Letter%20to%20Senate%20Supporting%20S%202827.pdf">support the passage of the act into law</a> and are working to have it reintroduced in Congress’ current session.</p>
<p>But even this legislation does not include the remains of Black people in museum collections. Such an addition would be <a href="https://blog.historian4hire.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/AfricanAmericanGraves-1992-A.pdf">more in line</a> with the <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo21358784.html">Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act</a>, a 1990 federal law that addresses Native American human remains in all contexts – both in the ground and in collections. This work is necessary because many of the remains of Black people, like those of Native Americans, were taken without the consent of family, used in ways that contravened spiritual traditions, and treated with less respect than most others in society. </p>
<p>In the absence of such an addition, the work of finding all of the African American remains in museums will be unorganized and inconsistent. Institutions will need to make efforts on their own, which will cost more money and consume more resources. Even more importantly, the absence of a coordinated, national effort will mean the delay of justice for thousands of African American ancestors whose bodies have been, and continue to be, desecrated.</p>
<p><em>Article updated to include an <a href="https://www.penn.museum/documents/pressroom/MortonCollectionRepatriation-Press%20release.pdf">April 12, 2021 announcement</a> from The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.</em></p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156558/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Proposed legislation would identify and protect African American cemeteries. But it wouldn’t cover the remains of thousands of Black people in museum collections.Delande Justinvil, Doctoral Student in Anthropology, American UniversityChip Colwell, Associate Research Professor of Anthropology, University of Colorado DenverLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1508252020-12-14T13:20:34Z2020-12-14T13:20:34ZW.E.B. Du Bois embraced science to fight racism as editor of NAACP’s magazine The Crisis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373656/original/file-20201208-21-huflu9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C17%2C2243%2C1613&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">W.E.B. Du Bois in his office at The Crisis in New York City, 1925.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-i0421">W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The NAACP – the most prominent interracial civil rights organization in American history – published the first issue of The Crisis, <a href="https://www.thecrisismagazine.com">its official magazine</a>, 110 years ago, in 1910. For almost two and a half decades, sociologist and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois served as its editor, famously using this platform to dismantle scientific racism. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Yellowed print ad for The Crisis with photo of a young Black child and text." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373621/original/file-20201208-20-w8p2rq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An advertisement for The Crisis, circa March 1925.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b170-i549">W.E.B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the time, many widely respected <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/211280">intellectuals gave credence to beliefs</a> that empirical evidence exists to justify a “natural” white superiority. Tearing down scientific racism was thus a necessary project for The Crisis. Under Du Bois’ leadership, the magazine laid bare the irrationality of scientific racism. </p>
<p>Less remembered, however, is how it also sought to help its readers understand and engage with contemporary science. </p>
<p>In nearly every issue, the magazine reported on scientific developments, recommended scientific works or featured articles on natural sciences. Du Bois’ time as editor of The Crisis was just as much about critically embracing careful, systematic, empirical science as it was about skewering the popular view that Blacks (and other nonwhites) were naturally inferior. </p>
<p>Sociologists <a href="https://as.vanderbilt.edu/sociology/bio/?who=patrick-greiner">Patrick Greiner</a> and <a href="https://faculty.utah.edu/u0847751-BRETT_CLARK/hm/index.hml">Brett Clark</a> <a href="https://arts-sciences.buffalo.edu/sociology/faculty/faculty-directory/besek-jordan.html">and I</a> recently pored through the magnificent <a href="https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/collection/mums312">W.E.B. Du Bois Papers</a> at the Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X20938624">We found that Du Bois not only drew from natural sciences</a>, but thought deeply about the ways in which The Crisis should and should not do so. He would even go so far as to critique allies for using science in ways he thought inappropriate.</p>
<h2>Case in point: Defending Darwin</h2>
<p>On Feb. 18, 1932, the Harlem pastor Adam Clayton Powell wrote to Du Bois, asking him to publish his recent address at a NAACP mass meeting in an upcoming issue of The Crisis.</p>
<p>A week later, <a href="http://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b192-i371">Du Bois responded</a> that while he’d read Powell’s address “with great interest,” he could not publish it as written. Why? It got biologist Charles Darwin and his theory of natural selection very wrong. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="excerpt of typewritten letter on yellowed paper" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373628/original/file-20201208-23-1ibsv7w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An excerpt of Du Bois’ letter of Feb. 25, 1925 to Adam Clayton Powell.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b192-i371">W.E.B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Darwin, explained Du Bois, did not try to demonstrate “who ought to survive,” as Powell’s address assumed. Rather, Darwin’s work is “simply a scientific statement” that had been twisted to support eugenicist and other pseudo-scientific doctrines. </p>
<p>This short reply to the powerful pastor contains so much. It shows that Du Bois demanded a nuanced appreciation of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Further, he insisted Darwin should not be held liable for the racist ideologues who misappropriated his work, cloaking their demagoguery in scientific objectivity. Darwin’s work is of clear value, but one must always remain aware that, like with all science, politics shaped its reception.</p>
<p>For Du Bois, how one understands and uses science were not minor issues. </p>
<h2>Science in The Crisis</h2>
<p>In the first section of <a href="https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr507789/">the first issue of The Crisis</a>, there is an archaeological report. It describes how “exploration of the African continent is yet in its infancy and will doubtless yield surprising results in establishing the advanced state of development attained by the black races in early times.” </p>
<p>According to the latest archaeology, in other words, African heritage is something to be proud of. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Subheading 'SCIENCE' above a column of text." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=210&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=210&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=210&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373640/original/file-20201208-18-1w0t65r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=264&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">On page 6 of the inaugural issue of The Crisis, a subheading for ‘SCIENCE.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr507789/">The Crisis. Vol. 1, No. 1; 1910. The Modernist Journals Project. Brown and Tulsa Universities, ongoing. www.modjourn.org</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Later in that issue, under the subheading “Science,” it is noted that a paper was read before the British Association for the Advancement of Science concluding that “all earlier human races were probably colored.” This same section notes a recent study providing evidence that, in a direct rebuke to scientific racism, “mere brain weight is no indication of mentality.”</p>
<p>In the second issue of The Crisis, the famed Columbia University anthropologist Franz Boas explained that there is no physical anthropological evidence “<a href="https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr507810/">showing inferiority of the Negro race</a>.” Later issues would highlight early African metallurgy and critique racist intelligence tests. Another would <a href="https://modjourn.org/issue/bdr507921/">recommend a work by Peter Kropotkin</a>, the great Russian anarchist and zoologist, which suggested that natural selection is more about cooperation among species than any fight for survival between them.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Article headlined 'Is the Negro Inferior?'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373652/original/file-20201208-20-8ogeie.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Crisis published articles by prestigious scholars who drew on science to refute racism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://books.google.com/books?id=AVgEAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">The Crisis, Nov. 1932</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Crisis published this sort of work throughout Du Bois’ time as editor. The reason why is clear. Du Bois knew that a proper understanding of science does not lead to biological essentialism – the idea that biology limits who you are and what you can do. It leads to the exact opposite conclusion, that every population has the ability to make their own meaning and determine themselves as they see fit. The only constraints are social processes like colonialism and racism. Science, for Du Bois, was in this way necessary and liberating.</p>
<h2>Science for an emancipated politics</h2>
<p>Today’s political moment is different than Du Bois’, though there are some parallels. One is that a political life free of exploitation and enhanced by participatory democracy remains out of reach for many. Disenfranchisement still exists in many forms. As the Black Lives Matter movement and others have shown, racism is a big reason why.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="W.E.B. Du Bois in his office, ca. 1948" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=688&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373659/original/file-20201208-22-1wfq5kt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">W.E.B. Du Bois in his office, ca. 1948, holding the first issue of The Crisis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-i0463">W.E.B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>While only a piece of the puzzle, Du Bois’ insistence on critically embracing a careful, systematic and empirical view of science can be an important part of that struggle for an emancipated politics. A critical embrace of science can help people better tackle pressing issues like environmental justice, health care disparities and more. </p>
<p>To critically embrace science is to, as Du Bois did in the pages of The Crisis, remain unwavering in the fact that any scientific theory promoting racial and other forms of injustice is categorically wrong.</p>
<p>He demonstrated how to reject racist science without rejecting the ways that science can help people better understand our relationships with the world. In particular, engaging science shows how our relationships with each other are not determined by nature, but are under our own control.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150825/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jordan Besek does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As editor of the magazine for 24 years, Du Bois featured articles about biology, evolution, archaeology in Africa and more to refute the rampant scientific racism of the early 20th century.Jordan Besek, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University at BuffaloLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1467632020-09-27T19:59:17Z2020-09-27T19:59:17ZWhite supremacists believe in genetic ‘purity’. Science shows no such thing exists<p>Far-right white supremacist ideology is on the rise in Europe, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-00546-3">North America</a> and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-24/asio-director-general-mike-burgess-neo-nazi-threat-rising/11994178">Australia</a>. It appeals to a <a href="https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-difficulties-in-overcoming-the-white-supremacist-phenomenon/">racist notion</a> whereby many white supremacists see themselves as members of a “pure” race that is at risk of dilution and contamination. </p>
<p>Science does not support the idea of pure races with ancient origins. In the past few years, genetic sequencing of ancient and modern humans and related species has given us a flood of new information about how human populations have evolved.</p>
<p>The evidence reveals a history of ongoing genetic mingling, due to interbreeding between different populations and even species. Humans from different groups had children together, and even with Neanderthals and members of other now-extinct hominin species.</p>
<p>This mingling occurred constantly in the long process of human migration across the globe. Europeans inhabit one region of a large genetic continuum and are no more or less “pure” than any other population.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-believers-in-white-genocide-are-spreading-their-hate-filled-message-in-australia-106605">How believers in 'white genocide' are spreading their hate-filled message in Australia</a>
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<h2>From Africa to the world</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.the-scientist.com/features/genetics-steps-in-to-help-tell-the-story-of-human-origins-67871">genetic history of humanity</a> begins in what we now know as Africa. The exact location (or locations) of the first anatomically modern humans is debated, but there is a consensus they lived south of the Sahara desert between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago. </p>
<p>A group or groups of these early humans migrated out of Africa and into the Middle East, as we now know it, some time between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago. Next, some went east into Asia while others headed west into Europe. </p>
<p>At some point, the wandering humans <a href="https://www.the-scientist.com/magazine-issue/infographic--history-of-ancient-hominin-interbreeding-66319">met and bred with Neanderthals</a>. These now-extinct hominins had left Africa many thousands of years earlier. </p>
<p>Modern Asians and Europeans still carry <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/116/31/15327">genetic signatures</a> of Neanderthals, while sub-Saharan Africans do not. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-dna-ancestry-testing-can-change-our-ideas-of-who-we-are-114428">How DNA ancestry testing can change our ideas of who we are</a>
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<p>The humans that migrated east into Asia also met and bred with other extinct species of hominins, including at least <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2018.02.031">two major injections of genes</a> from a group we call Denisovans. </p>
<p>Early modern humans almost certainly bred with other ancient hominins as well, because interspecies breeding was likely common. The remains of a girl with a <a href="https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/girl-had-a-denisovan-dad-and-neanderthal-mom-64674">Neanderthal mother and Denisovan father</a> have recently been discovered. Another recent study has shown some Neanderthals too <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6511/1653">carried traces of human DNA</a>.</p>
<h2>Genetic diversity leads to greater fitness</h2>
<p>Genetic diversity, as measured by a metric called heterozygosity, <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27654910/">decreases with geographic distance from Africa</a>. Higher heterozygosity is generally associated with greater genetic fitness for survival. </p>
<p>From this perspective it could be argued that, when the humans who walked away from Africa lost genetic diversity through living in small groups, they also lost genetic fitness. By the same argument, interbreeding between populations increases fitness. </p>
<p>In fact, Europeans probably benefited from picking up some Neanderthal DNA: these genes are thought to have <a href="https://www.the-scientist.com/features/neanderthal-dna-in-modern-human-genomes-is-not-silent-66299">diversified their immune systems</a> and may have contributed to their lighter pigmentation. </p>
<p>Humans who migrated west into Europe continued to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature21347">meet and breed with other human populations</a>. </p>
<p>Another wave of humans from what we call Anatolia (roughly modern-day Turkey) followed the initial spread of humans into Europe. The Yamnaya population from what we now know as the Russian steppe migrated west into Europe between 3,000 and 5,000 years ago. In fact, little genetic trace remains of the first human inhabitants of Europe, as they were continually supplanted by others.</p>
<p>Even the Roman civilisation, considered to be one of the historical foundations of European identity, was home to great genetic variety. A <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6466/708.abstract">recent study</a> looked at the genomes of 127 people from 29 sites across the past 10,000 years. It found an initial wave of hunter-gatherers had been supplanted by an Anatolian population, and during the age of Imperial Rome (27 BC to 300 AD) there were significant introductions of genes from what is now Iran and the eastern Mediterranean.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/vikings-were-never-the-pure-bred-master-race-white-supremacists-like-to-portray-84455">Vikings were never the pure-bred master race white supremacists like to portray</a>
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<h2>Even Vikings were diverse</h2>
<p>Blonde-haired, blue-eyed northern Europeans are considered by many white supremacists as the ideal of racial purity. They are epitomised historically by the Vikings. </p>
<p>However, the reality was different. A <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2688-8">recent study</a> of 442 human genomes from archaeological sites across Europe and Greenland found substantial ancestry from elsewhere in Europe entering Scandinavia during the Viking Age. In fact, Vikings were more likely to have dark hair than modern Scandinavians.</p>
<p>In short, the idea of a pure white race has no basis in genetics. Lightly pigmented skin, hair and eyes are simply an adaptation to northern European climates (and represent an inferior adaptation in equatorial regions). These features exist in a background of countless other genetic influences borrowed from many populations, old and new.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-science-has-been-abused-through-the-ages-to-promote-racism-50629">How science has been abused through the ages to promote racism</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146763/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dennis McNevin is the Director of the Genetic Ancestry Lab. He has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering (AINSE), the US Army International Technology Center - Pacific, ANU Connect Ventures and the AMP Tomorrow Fund.</span></em></p>Genetic studies show mingling between populations has been the norm throughout human history.Dennis McNevin, Professor of Forensic Genetics, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1332432020-05-27T14:02:01Z2020-05-27T14:02:01ZArchaeology is changing, slowly. But it’s still too tied up in colonial practices<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319620/original/file-20200310-61084-169scwp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">More room should be made for archaeologists who do things differently.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Robyn Walker/HERI</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For many people, the mention of archaeology makes them think of <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/franchise/indiana_jones">Indiana Jones</a>. He’s the hero of the 1980s movie franchise – but any archaeologist will tell you that Indiana isn’t very good at his job.</p>
<p>For starters, he destroys so much of the contextual information that could tell people more about the site where an artefact was found, the climate at the time, what material was used to make something and whether that material was local or from another area. That’s all just as important as the exciting artefact he’s trying to find.</p>
<p>The films also glorify the long relationship between colonialism and archaeology. Indigenous communities are depicted stereotypically, and Indiana isn’t above violent methods to collect the artefacts he wants. This isn’t poetic licence: <a href="https://theconversation.com/returning-looted-artefacts-will-finally-restore-heritage-to-the-brilliant-cultures-that-made-them-107479">colonialism</a> aided access to sites and the collection and distribution of artefacts. This gave colonial powers control of other cultures’ heritage – especially on <a href="https://qz.com/africa/1622544/why-western-museums-should-return-african-artifacts/">the African continent</a>.</p>
<p>There are <a href="https://qz.com/africa/1622544/why-western-museums-should-return-african-artifacts/">some moves</a> towards recognising archaeology’s colonial history. Some European nations have begun <a href="https://qz.com/africa/1807242/ethiopian-crown-artifact-returned-to-abiy-by-political-refugee/">to return</a> items taken from the African continent by archaeologists. Contemporary archaeologists also do a much better job than Indiana did, trying to understand a site and its social context.</p>
<p>The work we’re doing alongside other scholars at the University of Cape Town’s <a href="https://www.heriuct.co.za/research">Human Evolution Research Institute</a> in South Africa is trying, among other things, to address the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248418303555?via%3Dihub">legacies of racism and colonialism</a> in archaeology and related sciences.</p>
<h2>A chequered history</h2>
<p>Archaeology’s history in South Africa ties it to <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-12-21-00-out-of-the-heart-of-darkness/">race science</a>, which tried to justify racism.</p>
<p>Some of South Africa’s most prized archaeological finds were made by Western men who came to the country to study its people. Mapungubwe, an Iron Age archaeological site, was <a href="http://koedoe.co.za/index.php/koedoe/article/download/89/91">“discovered”</a> by a student and his father who coerced a black local informant into showing them where the sacred hill was.</p>
<p>Archaeologists also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/aug/18/great-zimbabwe-medieval-lost-city-racism-ruins-plundering">perpetuated the idea</a> that Great Zimbabwe and Mapungubwe, which had large stone wall structures, were constructed by outsiders such as Persians rather than by the African people who lived in these places. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319623/original/file-20200310-61127-ddw96b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319623/original/file-20200310-61127-ddw96b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319623/original/file-20200310-61127-ddw96b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319623/original/file-20200310-61127-ddw96b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319623/original/file-20200310-61127-ddw96b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319623/original/file-20200310-61127-ddw96b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319623/original/file-20200310-61127-ddw96b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A conical tower in the Great Enclosure of the Great Zimbabwe ruins.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">DeAgostini/Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Archaeological practices in the 19th and 20th centuries not only sidelined African people’s heritage and knowledge. They also resulted in many important fossils and artefacts being held in institutions outside Africa; many remain there today. African scholars and the indigenous people themselves often <a href="https://theconversation.com/reflections-on-ethiopias-stolen-treasures-on-display-in-a-london-museum-97346">have difficulty accessing this material</a>. </p>
<p>Some things have changed in the past few decades – but problems persist.</p>
<h2>Paper versus practice</h2>
<p>Many countries in Africa have <a href="http://www.panafprehistory.org/en/resources/african_heritage_laws">formal procedures</a> related to accessing archaeological sites. Legislation is also in place in many countries that outlines what’s to be done with material once it’s been discovered. And increasingly researchers are being encouraged or required to work with local researchers and communities.</p>
<p>But what’s on paper doesn’t always translate into practice. Some of the <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2020-03-09-rare-gabon-burial-cave-reveals-clues-to-african-history/">most recent</a> <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1252619/homo-sapiens-history-archaeology-latest-ancient-history-early-man-science-technolog">significant</a> <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52133534">advances</a> in the field were made as a result of foreign researchers working in Africa. </p>
<p>While this is recognised, there are problems often with research ethics and processes. That’s not to say foreign researchers shouldn’t be working in African countries. The problem is that their work can still happen with little or no interaction with local people, including researchers as well as communities who live near or on sites. And when locals do share their knowledge, it isn’t always acknowledged. Findings aren’t always shared with them in accessible forms nor is there necessarily protection of indigenous knowledge shared. </p>
<p>For this reason the San Institute of South Africa, for example, has developed a <a href="https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2017-05-23-respect-and-research-lessons-from-the-san-code-of-ethics">Code of Research Ethics</a> for researchers. Many of the continent’s indigenous people are deeply familiar with regions and landscapes on spiritual levels. Some have interacted closely with the types of objects that archaeologists are trying to find. </p>
<p>Often, archaeological sites have acquired new meaning for communities over time. Zimbabwe’s <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/306/">Matobo Hills</a>, for instance, have rock art sites originally produced thousands of years ago. They have subsequently become significant in different ways to local communities and are still of ritual significance. Archaeological research too often interferes with this without any real consultation.</p>
<p>There is also so much valuable local knowledge to tap into that can aid archaeological research. Recently <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/11/africa/ethiopia-buried-town-discovery-beta-samati-scn/index.html">a whole city was discovered in Ethiopia</a> because of local communities’ knowledge about the site. </p>
<p>It’s crucial for archaeologists to listen deeply and respectfully to indigenous people locally based at sites. There has been some great progress in this direction. The scholar Nthabiseng Mokoena <a href="http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/jspui/bitstream/10539/19341/1/Mokoena.%20Nthabisengdocx.pdf">examined</a> what the rock art in Matatiele in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province meant to local communities and what this would mean for conservation and research at these sites. Working closely with the community produced recommendations that genuinely included them and protected their sacred sites.</p>
<p>But too often archaeology is still extractive and not aware of <a href="https://archive.archaeology.org/0611/abstracts/sudan.html">sociopolitical issues</a> and research sensitivities. </p>
<h2>Ethical approaches</h2>
<p>A lot of work lies ahead to make sure that archaeology does not perpetuate colonial power dynamics in its practice. There are a few ways to do this.</p>
<p>One of these, which we are championing at the Human Evolution Research Institute, is to <a href="https://www.heriuct.co.za/news-content/a-safe-space-to-research-our-origins">cultivate young African scholars</a>. These scholars are taught to include communities and genuinely value the continent’s heritage and local indigenous knowledge.</p>
<p>Collected material shouldn’t only be available to scientists from the global North. African researchers, in African countries, need to be able to access the continent’s heritage and history and share it with descendant communities. </p>
<p>Ethical practice requires awareness of colonial history and how that has benefited archaeology – and why it’s not sustainable. Indiana Jones’ days are numbered.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133243/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robyn Humphreys receives funding from the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>June Bam-Hutchison works as interim director of the San and Khoe Research Studies Unit within the Centre for African Studies at the University of Cape Town. She is also co-founder of the A/Xarra Restorative Justice Forum an indigenous knowledge partnership with traditional structures established in 2018. Her research in the field has been funded through the National Institute of Human and Social Sciences' Catalytic Precolonial Project through the NRF Chair on Land and Democracy. Her current research with global indigenous scholars on 'deep listening' titled '!Gâ re – Rangatiranga – Dadirri: Decolonizing the ‘capture of knowledge’ is hosted and funded by the Worldwide University Network. She is also a Visiting Professor with Stanford University's overseas programme since 2014. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Ackermann receives funding from the National Research Foundation and the DST/NRF Centre of Excellence in Palaeosciences.. </span></em></p>There are some moves towards recognising and redressing archaeology’s colonial history.Robyn Humphreys, PhD candidate, Department of Archaeology and Human Evolution Research Institute, University of Cape TownJune Bam-Hutchison, Senior Research Officer Khoe and San Studies, University of Cape TownRebecca Ackermann, Professor, Department of Archaeology and Human Evolution Research Institute, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1178702019-05-29T13:40:08Z2019-05-29T13:40:08ZHow controversial “racist” research opens door for a decolonisation drive<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276965/original/file-20190529-192462-82trea.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Historically, Khoisan people from southern Africa were used as scientific subjects in racist experiments.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">hecke61/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There has been justified outrage about a recently published – and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13825585.2019.1598538">hastily retracted </a>– <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13825585.2019.1598538">academic article</a> written by academics from Stellenbosch University in South Africa.</p>
<p>The article suggested that “coloured” women in South Africa “present with low cognitive function and which is significantly influenced by education”. Coloured is a racial classification legalised during apartheid for people of “mixed race”. This allegedly low cognition was also linked to unhealthy lifestyle behaviours.</p>
<p>A myriad of articles have been written that criticise the authors’ work, and <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/capeargus/news/stellenbosch-study-on-coloured-women-draws-on-colonial-stereotypes-22166233">take aim</a> at their university’s ethics committee for allowing the study to be conducted. They have been accused of racial essentialism; of <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2019-04-25-study-on-coloured-womens-intelligence-scientifically-flawed-says-professor/">methodological flaws</a>; and of <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/ideas/2019-04-25-racist-medical-myths-persist-with-sas-diseased-apartheid-mentality/">connecting race with medical conditions</a>.</p>
<p>There’s one particularly important concept that’s been given a lot of attention in the debates – the notion of <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/rdm/lifestyle/2018-03-01-jonathan-jansen-evidence-of-the-persistence-of-racial-science-is-all-around-us">“race science”</a>, which is also called scientific racism. The article and the opprobrium that followed are a reminder that race and racism are still deeply embedded in science, and must be exorcised. </p>
<p>This can only be achieved by decolonising modern western science. By “decolonise”, I mean “decentre” rather than destroy modern western science. It must be stripped of the epistemological and methodological privileges it enjoys. It must be <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11159-007-9056-x">placed on the same plane</a> as other approaches to knowledge and research. In this way, it can be compared equitably with other ways of knowing.</p>
<p>If this approach becomes commonplace, then new knowledge spaces will be created. In these spaces, those from different knowledge traditions can produce new knowledge through the negotiation of trust. They can apply different lenses and ask different questions that won’t lead them to racialised ways of thinking and operating. But, this will require a willingness to accept that modern western science is one way and not the only way of understanding the natural world. </p>
<p>Over the years progress has been made to excise racism from science or to compensate those who were victims of scientific racism. One example is the compensation of the families of the African American men who were denied diagnosis and treatment for syphilis in the well-known <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm">Tuskegee study</a>. Another is the universal acceptance of the principle in ethics that states <a href="https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/first-do-no-harm-201510138421">“do no harm”</a>. However, this has not arrested enduring racism in science. </p>
<h2>Race science rising</h2>
<p>Race science concerns the use of science as a vehicle to advance racist agendas, or where race is used as a variable in science for the purpose of labelling certain groups of people negatively or defining them in deficit terms. </p>
<p>There are many examples of this in history. Carolus Linnaeus, who developed the modern system of classifying living things, classified Khoisan (first nations people of southern Africa) as <em><a href="https://fyp.uoregon.edu/sites/fyp2.uoregon.edu/files/malefijt_1968.pdf">Homo monstrosus</a></em>: monstrous or abnormal people. And <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/opinion/2019/2019-05/study-signals-enduring-racism-in-science.html">in 1937</a>, scientists in the Zoology Department at Stellenbosch University used 80 measurements to confirm the category “coloured man” as distinctive from “white man”.</p>
<p>British science journalist Angela Saini <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/18/race-science-on-the-rise-angela-saini?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Email">points out</a> that race science is on the rise again internationally. And, she argues, it’s being advanced in subtle ways by well-educated people who wear smart suits. This includes academics at leading universities around the world.</p>
<p>It’s important to be alive to the dangers of race science because it can be used to justify racism in broader society.</p>
<p>But it continues to exist because it is part of a system of thought that I call modern western science. I’m referring here to science embedded in Eurocentrism: a way of thinking that prioritised anything from the western world – and particularly from Europe – and that was <a href="http://dro.deakin.edu.au/view/DU:30000550">spread and entrenched through colonisation</a>.</p>
<p>Given its original site of production, this school of thought necessarily centres European history. Through its various incarnations, an ideal identity of human was formed that is male, white, heterosexual, able-bodied – and this is a screen against which others are declared different. Positing others as “different” (and inferior) opened the door to race science.</p>
<h2>A new approach</h2>
<p>Of course, modern western science did not develop free from the influence of other knowledges. Through colonising places, it picked up certain ideas and approaches from different countries or regions. For example, Indigenous peoples in North America helped settlers to treat life-threatening scurvy through the application of tonics made from conifer needles, which were rich in Vitamin C.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-indigenous-knowledge-advances-modern-science-and-technology-89351">How Indigenous knowledge advances modern science and technology</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>However, such knowledges were absorbed into a western cultural archive and represented in western terms. For example, the pain-reliever Aspirin was first discovered by Indigenous people – they used <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-indigenous-knowledge-advances-modern-science-and-technology-89351">willow bark</a>, which contains the active ingredient from which Aspirin was created. More importantly, modern western science has not paid homage to the influence of other knowledge systems.</p>
<p>There is no denying that modern western science has brought some benefits to humanity. But this does not mean it shouldn’t be interrogated and, as I suggested earlier, de-centred. The upshot of this would be the democratisation of science in two ways. First, by broadening who participates in the production of scientific knowledge; and second, by broadening what counts as science. This would help to root out race science.</p>
<p>Science has always been and will always remain the product of human will and intention. Scientific knowledge will always be culturally and historically produced. And if we are to speak in any sense about objectivity in science, this must be produced by science that is multicultural and not universal.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117870/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lesley Le Grange receives funding from the National Research Foundation (NRF) in South Africa. </span></em></p>Modern western science must be stripped of the epistemological and methodological privileges it enjoys.Lesley Le Grange, Distinguished Professor of Curriculum Studies, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/838982017-09-17T10:43:28Z2017-09-17T10:43:28ZRacism is behind outlandish theories about Africa’s ancient architecture<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185641/original/file-20170912-19562-14y394t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=793%2C1491%2C4095%2C2405&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The pyramids of Giza on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Some of the most impressive buildings and cities ever made by humans can be found in Africa: the ruined city of <a href="http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/364">Great Zimbabwe</a>, <a href="https://www.sanparks.org/parks/mapungubwe/">Mapungubwe</a> in South Africa, Kenya’s <a href="http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5501/">Gedi Ruins</a> and <a href="http://www.ancient.eu/Meroe/">Meroe</a> in Sudan. Perhaps the most awe-inspiring of these are the last remaining of the <a href="http://www.ancient.eu/The_Seven_Wonders/">Seven Wonders of the Ancient World</a>, the <a href="https://www.livescience.com/32616-how-were-the-egyptian-pyramids-built-.html">Great Pyramid of Giza</a>, in Egypt.</p>
<p>This should come as no surprise. Africa has an extensive archaeological record, extending as far back as 3.3 million years ago when the <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v521/n7552/full/nature14464.html">first-ever stone tool</a> was made in what is today Kenya. The continent’s cultural complexity and diversity is well established; it is home to the world’s oldest-known <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/334/6053/219">pieces of art</a>. And, of course, it is the birth place of modern humans’ ancient ancestors, <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v546/n7657/full/nature22336.html"><em>Homo sapiens</em></a>.</p>
<p>Despite all this evidence, some people still refuse to believe that anyone from Africa (or anywhere in what is today considered the developing world) could possibly have created and constructed the Giza pyramids or other ancient masterpieces. Instead, they credit <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/pyramidology_01.shtml">ancient astronauts, extraterrestrials or time travellers as the real builders</a>. </p>
<p>Well, you may ask, so what? Who cares if relatively few people don’t believe the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids? What’s the harm? Actually, there <em>is</em> great harm: firstly, these people try to prove their theories by travelling the world and desecrating ancient artefacts. Secondly, they perpetuate and give air to the racist notion that only Europeans – white people – ever were and ever will be capable of such architectural feats. </p>
<h2>A threat to world heritage</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.news.com.au/why-did-two-german-hobbyists-deface-a-cartouche-of-khufu-inside-the-great-pyramid-and-what-does-it-have-to-do-with-atlantis/news-story/7db71b6e1e74976cdbe7736c0e5af4c4">In 2014</a> two German pseudo-scientists set out to “prove” that academics were concealing the Giza pyramids’ “real” origin. To do so, they chiselled off a piece of one of the pyramids – of course, without authorisation, so they could “analyse” it.</p>
<p>And earlier in 2017 scientists from the World Congress on Mummy Studies in South America published a communique on their <a href="https://www.facebook.com/wcoms/posts/804089006431344:0">Facebook page</a> to draw attention to the raiding of Nazca graves for a pseudo-scientific research programme called the <a href="https://www.the-alien-project.com/en/">Alien project</a>. It insists that aliens rather than ancient Peruvians were responsible for the famous geoglyphs called the Nazca Lines, despite <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/how-to-fake-an-alien-mummy/535251/">all the evidence</a> to the contrary.</p>
<p>Such incidents exemplify the threats to developing nations’ cultural heritage. Conservation authorities around the world must spend a great deal of money to protect and restore unique pieces of heritage, and to guard them against vandalism. For instance, the most recent overhaul planned for the Giza site – back in 2008 – was estimated at a cost of <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/en/originals/2016/03/egypt-pyramid-military-tourism-complaints-project.html">USD$45 million</a>.</p>
<p>These are not wealthy nations, as a rule, and it costs money they often don’t have to repair the damage done by, among others, pseudo-scientists.</p>
<h2>Racism and colonial attitudes</h2>
<p>A series of stone circles in South Africa’s Mpumalanga province provides an excellent example of the other problem with pseudo-archaeologists. Some people genuinely believe that these structures were designed by aliens. They scoff at scientific research that <a href="http://witspress.co.za/catalogue/forgotten-world/">proves</a> the stone circles were made by the Koni people using ropes, sticks and wood. They will not even entertain the notion that ancient African tribes could be responsible.</p>
<p>But the same people have no problem believing that medieval Europeans built the continent’s magnificent cathedrals using only ropes, sticks and wood. They dismiss scientific research that <a href="https://www.livescience.com/32616-how-were-the-egyptian-pyramids-built-.html">overwhelmingly proves</a> ancient Africans’ prowess, but insist the documents which contain evidence of Europeans’ construction processes are beyond reproach.</p>
<p>Why is it <a href="http://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/travel-interests/arts-and-culture/ancient-sites-built-by-aliens/">so hard</a> for some to acknowledge that ancient non-European civilisations like the Aztecs, people from Easter Island, ancient Egyptians or Bantu-speakers from southern Africa could create intricate structures?</p>
<p>The answer is unfortunately as simple as it seems: it boils down to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/how-to-fake-an-alien-mummy/535251/">profound racism</a> and a feeling of white superiority that emanates from the rotting corpse of colonialism.</p>
<p>Colonial powers saw their “subjects” in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia as exotic, fascinating – but ultimately primitive.</p>
<p>An increasing knowledge and understanding of the archaeological record mostly dispelled these notions. But for some, and until nowadays, it seems unthinkable that ancient non-European societies have been resourceful and creative enough to erect such monuments. So, the thinking went, conventional science must have been missing or hiding something: ancient astronauts, aliens, or the lost civilisation of Atlantis. Even some <a href="https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/aegyp/article/view/40164/33823">mainstream scholars</a> have dabbled in this thinking. </p>
<h2>Telling the truth</h2>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185797/original/file-20170913-20570-upk24i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185797/original/file-20170913-20570-upk24i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/185797/original/file-20170913-20570-upk24i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185797/original/file-20170913-20570-upk24i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185797/original/file-20170913-20570-upk24i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185797/original/file-20170913-20570-upk24i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185797/original/file-20170913-20570-upk24i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/185797/original/file-20170913-20570-upk24i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The ancient city of Meroe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The internet and social media has given these modern conspiracy junkies a perfect platform to share their theories. They try to make others believe that scientists are hiding “the truth” about ancient monuments. Sometimes they even succeed. </p>
<p>There is a risk that they will drown out quality knowledge and science with their colourful, outlandish theories. When such bizarre theories emerge, it can water down people’s understanding and appreciation of Africa’s architectural and cultural heritage. </p>
<p>At the same time, these theories can prevent awareness about Africa’s rich heritage from developing. The heirs of the real builders may never learn about their ancestors’ remarkable achievements.</p>
<p>Scientists have a crucial role to play in turning the tide on such harmful theories. Those of us who are doing ongoing research around the continent’s architectural and fossil record should be sharing our findings in a way that engages ordinary people. </p>
<p>We must show them just how awe-inspiring structures like Great Zimbabwe, Meroe and the Giza Pyramids are – not because they were created by some alien race, but because they are living proof of ancient societies’ ingenuity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83898/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julien Benoit receives funding from The Claude Leon Foundation; PAST and its Scatterlings projects; the National Research Foundation of South Africa; and the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Palaeosciences (CoE in Palaeosciences).</span></em></p>The belief that ancient Egyptians needed help from supernatural beings to built the Giza pyramids relies, unavoidably, on racism and colonial attitudes.Julien Benoit, Postdoc in Vertebrate Palaeontology, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/786172017-06-08T16:31:58Z2017-06-08T16:31:58ZThe perversion of paleontology by apartheid’s advocates still lingers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172678/original/file-20170607-11297-11rdzfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Children gather around a fossil skull at a South African museum.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Jon Hrusa </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1925, <a href="http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/people.php?id=65-251-19">Jan Smuts</a> was both a prominent politician and an advocate for science. Just after the first of his two terms as prime minister of the Union of South Africa, Smuts served as president of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science. It was in this capacity that he spoke out about <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/raymond-arthur-dart">Raymond Dart’s</a> discovery of <em>Australopithecus africanus</em> and his theories about the <a href="http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/fossils/taung-child">Taung skull</a>, saying these ideas meant that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>South Africa may yet figure as the cradle of mankind, or shall I rather, say, one of the cradles?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He remained in government at the time and actively supported the emerging discipline of paleontology – not just in speeches but in personalised contacts with the scientists who were birthing it. And so, as Christa Kuljan points out in her new book <a href="http://www.jacana.co.za/book-categories/natural-history-a-travel/darwins-hunch-detail">Darwin’s Hunch: Science, Race, and the Search for Human Origins</a>, from the beginning of the search for the “cradle” the role of state support – or lack thereof – was essential to how scientific research was conducted in South Africa. </p>
<p>In the book, Kuljan examines the history of South African palaeoanthropology and genetics research as she tries to make sense of science, race and their links to the hunt for human origins. The “hunch” she refers to was Darwin’s idea, from 1871, that humans evolved in Africa. He was later proved right. But for a long time European scientists rejected his thesis.</p>
<p>As an intellectual history of the disciplines of paleontology and paleoanthropology, Kuljan’s book is especially adept at narrating the interwoven connections between science and power. There are shortcomings, too; she doesn’t really grapple with ideas around identity, and could have explored some scientists’ bizarre preoccupation with Spiritualism in more depth.</p>
<p>The victory of the National Party (NP) in 1948’s elections, as Kuljan shows, threw paleontology into a crisis. This wasn’t only because the effusive support shown by Smuts was lost, but also because the meaning of the word “race” changed to suit the ideological ambitions of apartheid’s advocates. </p>
<h2>The fate of race</h2>
<p>Suspicion and complicity were united under the NP’s rule. Religion rather than science was used as the foundation of race thinking. But at the same time individual scientists – paleoanthropologist <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/professor-emeritus-phillip-tobias">Phillip Tobias</a> being the most prominent – were repeatedly asked to endorse the existence of “race” and “races”. </p>
<p>Tobias’ behaviour when it came to race was ambiguous.</p>
<p>In 1961 he published a paper titled “<a href="http://www.indiana.edu/%7Eafrcol/items/show/16485">The Meaning of Race</a>” in which he questioned the academic usefulness of the category of race. But at the same time he was leading the “Campbell Griqua Expedition” which exhumed 35 skeletons of people identified as <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/griqua">Griqua</a>. This was one instance of blatant and criminal “grave digging” by anatomists and paleoanthropologists.</p>
<p>The exhumations reveal a blind spot of the era’s paleontologists, like Tobias – one that even Kuljan does not observe. As far as we know the word “Griqua” is an invention. The people identified by the name are the epitome of hybridity in South Africa. Tobias and his team were looking for “pure Koranna” and “pure Bushman”. They were looking at the “Bushman” once again as the “missing link” – but that’s exactly the opposite of what the Griqua were: from their first appearance on the frontier, they were understood to be a cultural melange of indigenous and enslaved forefathers. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172681/original/file-20170607-11301-wz2oas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172681/original/file-20170607-11301-wz2oas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172681/original/file-20170607-11301-wz2oas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172681/original/file-20170607-11301-wz2oas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172681/original/file-20170607-11301-wz2oas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172681/original/file-20170607-11301-wz2oas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172681/original/file-20170607-11301-wz2oas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/172681/original/file-20170607-11301-wz2oas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1145&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jacana Media</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The failure to really dig into the question of “Griqua” identity is, I think, one of the glaring absences in Kuljan’s account. She could have simply asked the question: what does it mean to erase “hybridity” and replace it with “purity”? By missing this step, the apartheid mania for <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-myth-of-white-purity-and-narratives-that-fed-racism-in-south-africa-59330">racial purity</a> is once again left untouched. </p>
<p>Without this acknowledgement of the irrational, “science” remains “rational” – even while “race” seems to derail its assumptions and unhinge even the most talented minds. </p>
<h2>The metaphysics of science</h2>
<p>This derangement is also evident in the frequency with which believers in the “science of Man” – author J.M. Coetzee’s term for the ethnological disciplines – resorted to Spiritualism. </p>
<p>So, Kuljan writes, both <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/evan.10024/epdf">John Robinson</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/dr-robert-broom-discoverer-mrs-ples-born">Robert Broom</a> – two of South Africa’s most prominent paleontologists – were members or attended the meetings of the mystically-focused <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/theosophy">Theosophical Society</a>.</p>
<p>The collision of science and religion caused Robinson to cleave them apart, Kuljan explains, since he saw</p>
<blockquote>
<p>science as explaining the material world, but he looked to his spiritual side to explore non-material aspects of the universe (page 127). </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He went even further by inviting a clairvoyant from New Zealand, Geoffrey Hodson, to Sterkfontein near Johannesburg to channel the life of the “ape-man” via fossils. The <a href="http://www.maropeng.co.za/content/page/explore-the-caves">Sterkfontein caves</a> were quickly becoming the most attractive site for finding fossils. Colloquially, even scientists referred to these fossils as a confirmation of an ancestor who was an “ape-man”. </p>
<p>Robinson invited Hodson to conjure the life of an “ape-man” since this was presumed to be the main characteristic of the human ancestor who became known as <em>Australopithecus africanus</em>. </p>
<p>These and other resorts to metaphysics are not as well explored in the book as they could have been. </p>
<p>It’s not surprising that as human beings scientists can entertain crystal ball visions and table-tapping seances even while claiming to be materialists. The most enduring legacy of these vacillations is that it has bequeathed to us a rather conflicted image of our hominid ancestors.</p>
<h2>African Genesis goes viral</h2>
<p>In Kuljan’s book this conflict revolves around the place of violence in the emergence of homo sapiens. The scientists are not entirely at fault here since it was the sensationalism of Robert Ardrey’s <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/African_genesis.html?id=9Yg1AAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">book</a> <em>African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man</em> (1961) that catapulted the fragmentary bones and skulls of southern Africa into a full-blown technicolour picture of a hominid ancestor who was a “killer ape”. </p>
<p>This reimagined violent ancestor is still with us not only in the continuing endeavour to “humanise” hominids – the liberal reaction – but also in the visceral <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2015/09/24/Stop-divisive-attacks-over-Homo-naledi-Makhura">attack</a> on the recently discovered <em>Homo naledi</em> by those who think of hominids as “apes”. </p>
<p>Somewhere in between lies the truth of our ancestors. Kuljan’s book is a brave attempt to make this search for our ancestry a recuperable enterprise even while the “killer ape” keeps escaping her scientific confines and invading the imagination of the popular “scientist” and naysayer.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78617/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hlonipha Mokoena does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As an intellectual history of the disciplines of paleontology and paleoanthropology, Kuljan’s book is especially adept at narrating the interwoven connections between science and power.Hlonipha Mokoena, Associate Professor at the Wits Institute for Social & Economic Research, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/751372017-03-27T14:21:17Z2017-03-27T14:21:17ZBorn into revolution: reflections on a radical teacher’s life<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162632/original/image-20170327-3279-12135o2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Alie Fataar, photographed during his exile in Zambia, was a revolutionary teacher.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Alie Fataar</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Alie Fataar was a teacher. Perhaps that doesn’t seem glamorous and very important. But Fataar, who would have turned 100 this month, is one of the many South African unknowns whose life and work can point the country today in a direction it ought to follow.</p>
<p>Fataar and his comrades developed an unparalleled educational project during the darkest days of colonialism and apartheid. Their work from about the 1940s explicitly debunked the <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?hl=en&lr=&id=C4m8Vc2rWyYC&oi=fnd&pg=PP8&dq=scientific+racism+apartheid&ots=x0tB0B-OZm&sig=GSuhdfq_Mbhzyx1Py8LAFWgNntk#v=onepage&q=scientific%20racism%20apartheid&f=false">pseudo-scientific racist notion</a> that intelligence and human worth were unequal by virtue of physical characteristics such as skin colour and the texture of one’s hair. </p>
<p>In the 27 years between starting his career as a teacher and fleeing into exile from the apartheid government, Fataar profoundly influenced five generations of oppressed pupils. He instilled in them the virtues of critical citizenship and a profound, articulated anti-racism. His mantra, and that of the progressives he worked alongside, was: “There is only one race – the human race.”</p>
<p>Fataar was the subject of my <a href="https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/item/19505/thesis_hum_2015_omar_yunus.pdf?sequence=1">PhD thesis</a>. Why does he interest me so much and why am I now writing this reflection on a life that has been relegated to the margins of South Africa’s education resistance history? Quite simply, because he exemplifies the type of teacher South Africa sorely requires today if its classrooms are to be used to develop a new generation of critical, engaged students.</p>
<p>Fataar and his comrades showed that South Africa needs teachers who know that teaching is, by definition, an acutely political act. It requires a critical outlook that is independent, fearless and sustained.</p>
<h2>Who was Alie Fataar?</h2>
<p>Alie Fataar was born on March 26 1917 in Claremont, a working class suburb in Cape Town. 1917 was a significant year: in Russia, <a href="https://global.britannica.com/event/Russian-Revolution-of-1917">the revolution</a> was to shape the world in significant ways. <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/world-war-i-history">World War 1</a>, the “Great War”, continued to maim and kill millions. South Africa was a colony of Great Britain, which introduced apartheid-style legislation that oppressed the country’s not-white citizens. In 1918, Nelson Mandela was born. </p>
<p>Fataar was the youngest of 12 children. His father, Salamudien Fataar, was a tailor at Garlicks, a fine goods retailer and his mother, Janap Moosa, was a washerwoman. </p>
<p>Fataar’s father was not literate, but the young man was obsessive about reading and progressing through education. When he enrolled at Claremont’s Livingstone High School in 1929 he continued a pattern established during his primary school years, placing him at the top of the class.</p>
<p>Livingstone shaped Alie Fataar. There he encountered soaring intellects in teachers like Hassan Abrahams and E.C. Roberts. They were members of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/teachers%E2%80%99-league-south-africa-tlsa-conference-1925">Teachers’ League of South Africa</a> (TLSA) and declared unequivocally that their students were anybody’s equal – simply by virtue of being human. This thinking was revolutionary at a time when South Africans who were not white were considered and treated as inferior. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162634/original/image-20170327-3283-dp95bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162634/original/image-20170327-3283-dp95bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162634/original/image-20170327-3283-dp95bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162634/original/image-20170327-3283-dp95bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162634/original/image-20170327-3283-dp95bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162634/original/image-20170327-3283-dp95bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162634/original/image-20170327-3283-dp95bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162634/original/image-20170327-3283-dp95bi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The combined Livingstone High School Standards 9 and 10 (Grades 11 and 12) classes in 1934.
(Standing) Left to right: A. Solomon, C. Wade, Alie Fataar, P. Francis, N. Thomas, W. Ludolph, D. Hendricks.
(Sitting) Left to right: J. Slinger, C. Parker, J. Henry, M. Dennis, T. Basson, W. Williams.
(Front: mascot) J. Rhoda.
Absent: I. Salie.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Alie Fataar</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After school, in 1935, Fataar enrolled at Cape Town’s Zonnebloem College of Education. In 1937, he landed a post at his <em>alma mater</em>, Livingstone High School. As a senior English teacher he revelled in the responsibility of moulding his students into people who rejected an imposed inferior status, and who aspired to actualise their full human potential. Fataar was banned in 1961 under the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/suppression-communism-act-no-44-1950-approved-parliament">Suppression of Communism Act</a> and was no longer allowed to play any role in organisations like the TLSA, African Peoples’ Democratic Union of Southern Africa and the Non-European Unity Movement. </p>
<p>He kept teaching while under surveillance by the notorious special branch. He was accused of breaching his banning order several times and fled into exile in 1965.</p>
<p>Between then and his return to South Africa in 1993, Fataar lived in three newly decolonised African states: Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe. He initially struggled to find work but then began a “second life” in education. He taught in all three countries and worked for both the Zambian and Zimbabwean governments as an education specialist. He eventually retired when he was 71, having served education in Africa for an astounding 51 years.</p>
<p>He was 76 when he returned to South Africa in 1993. He engaged robustly with public education, globalisation and the militarisation of public life through newspaper articles, letters to the editor and community radio forums that had been established in the post-apartheid era. His appetite for political debate and engagement was not dulled by age. </p>
<h2>Radicalising teaching</h2>
<p>Fataar was not the only radical thinker and educator influenced by the Teachers’ League of South Africa. </p>
<p>The organisation emerged in the first decades of the 20th century as an assimilationist “coloured” political entity. The concept “coloured”, like most racial tags, is shrouded in controversy even today. Here, for analytical purposes, it indicates the politically-inscribed community that emerged from the colonial sexual encounter with the enslaved, indigenous population at the Cape. This “community” was labelled “coloured” by the colonial and later apartheid regimes. </p>
<p>In the late 1930s literature from the Russian revolution was finding its way into Cape Town’s progressive intellectual circles. The league was captured by young radicals. The radicalised league and its teachers became explicitly and organisationally committed to the creation of a new world. Through their teaching, they aimed to undo the violence of the colonial and later the formal apartheid education dispensations.</p>
<p>It was a revolutionary moment in South Africa’s making. These intellectuals created the vision of a new, just society through writing, publishing, debate, and a fierce contestation of ideas both against the enemy, and within their own ranks.</p>
<p>Historians and public intellectuals such as Ciraj Rassool have written about this project that aimed at nothing less than “<a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/The%20Individual,%20Auto-biography%20and%20History%20by%20Ciraj%20Rasool.pdf">taking a nation to school</a>”. </p>
<p>This was arguably the most contested and creative political space and period in South Africa’s history. But its details are not included in post-apartheid’s struggle narratives – and so these radical teachers are not known. Yet it’s they who created a fierce counter-educational narrative to the dehumanising tenets of colonial and apartheid education.</p>
<p>And their work remains relevant today.</p>
<p>The ideals of a teacher born 100 years ago need to be inserted into the country’s official narratives. Fataar, who died on June 9 2005, left a legacy of teaching as an act of defiance in the face of intellectual dishonesty. Quality teaching, he taught us, is teaching with a social justice orientation, geared towards the creation of a radically new society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75137/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yunus Omar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Alie Fataar exemplifies the type of teacher South Africa sorely requires today if its classrooms are to be used to develop a new generation of critical, engaged students.Yunus Omar, Post-doctoral researcher, Cape Peninsula University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/592192016-05-20T01:06:24Z2016-05-20T01:06:24ZKennewick Man will be reburied, but quandaries around human remains won’t<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123227/original/image-20160519-4451-1wr6n2y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">This clay facial reconstruction of Kennewick Man, carefully sculpted around the morphological features of his skull, suggests how he may have looked alive nearly 9,000 years ago.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://newsdesk.si.edu/photos/kennewick-man">Brittney Tatchell, Smithsonian Institution</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A mysterious set of 9,000-year-old bones, unearthed nearly 20 years ago in Washington, is <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/over-9000-years-later-kennewick-man-will-be-given-native-american-burial-180958947/">finally going home</a>. Following bitter disputes, five Native American groups in the Pacific Northwest have come together to facilitate the reburial of an individual they know as “Ancient One.” One of the most complete prehistoric human skeletons discovered in North America, “Kennewick Man” also became the most controversial.</p>
<p>Two teenagers searching out a better view of a Columbia River speedboat race in 1996 were the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/scientists-mysterious-kennewick-man-looked-polynesian-and-came-from-far-away/2014/08/25/45411b2a-27b3-11e4-86ca-6f03cbd15c1a_story.html">first to spot Kennewick Man’s remains</a>. Since then, the bones have mostly been stored away from public view, carefully preserved in museum storerooms while subject to hotly contested legal battles.</p>
<p>Some anthropologists were eager to <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vnfv/ncurrent/full/nature14625.html?message-global=remove">scientifically test the bones</a> hoping for clues about who the first Americans were and where they came from. But many Native Americans hesitated to support this scientific scrutiny (including tests which permanently destroy or damage the original bone), arguing it was disrespectful to their ancient ancestor. They wanted him laid to rest.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123268/original/image-20160519-16754-15lmeug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123268/original/image-20160519-16754-15lmeug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123268/original/image-20160519-16754-15lmeug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123268/original/image-20160519-16754-15lmeug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123268/original/image-20160519-16754-15lmeug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123268/original/image-20160519-16754-15lmeug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123268/original/image-20160519-16754-15lmeug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123268/original/image-20160519-16754-15lmeug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kennewick Man’s remains had rested in the Columbia River Gorge for millennia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Columbia_River_Gorge_(3).jpg">Bleeding Skies</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This high-profile discovery served as an important, if maddening, test case for a significant new law, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (<a href="https://www.nps.gov/nagpra/">NAGPRA</a>). It aimed to address the problematic history behind museum human remains collections. First it mandated inventories – many museums, in fact, were unaware how large their skeletal collections really were. Then, in certain cases, it called for returning skeletons and mummies to their closest descendant group. Since NAGPRA passed in 1990, the National Park Service estimates <a href="https://www.nps.gov/nagpra/FAQ/INDEX.HTM#How_many">over 50,000 sets of human remains</a> have been repatriated in the United States.</p>
<p>The legal framework fits well in cases where ancestry could be determined – think remains found on a specific 19th-century battlefield – but other instances became more contentious. Scientists sometimes argued that very old remains, including Kennewick Man, represented earlier migrations into the Americas by groups who might have moved on long ago. This point of view often clashed with indigenous perspectives, particularly beliefs that their ancestors have lived in specific places since the dawn of time.</p>
<p>Drawn against this complex background, it’s no wonder it’s taken almost two decades to bring the Kennewick Man story into better focus. </p>
<h2>Long history of scientizing some human remains</h2>
<p>Museums in the U.S. and Europe have <a href="http://www.basicbooks.com/full-details?isbn=9780465092253">collected and studied human remains</a> for well over a century, with the practice gaining considerable momentum after the Civil War. Archaeologists, anatomists and a mishmash of amateurs – influenced by an array of emergent sciences and pseudosciences – gathered bones by the thousands, shipping them in boxes to museums in an effort to systematically study race and, gradually, human prehistory.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123273/original/image-20160519-16754-1a00vyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123273/original/image-20160519-16754-1a00vyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123273/original/image-20160519-16754-1a00vyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123273/original/image-20160519-16754-1a00vyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123273/original/image-20160519-16754-1a00vyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123273/original/image-20160519-16754-1a00vyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123273/original/image-20160519-16754-1a00vyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123273/original/image-20160519-16754-1a00vyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many museums in the United States store human remains collections in spaces colloquially known as ‘bone rooms.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/niklasstjerna/5314416884">N Stjerna</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Museum “bone rooms,” organized to collect and study human remains, helped facilitate new scientific work in the late 19th and early 20th century. The <a href="http://www.amazon.com/SKELETAL-BIOLOGY-PLAINS-OWSLEY-DOUGLAS/dp/1560980931">skeletons provided better data</a> about diseases and migration, as well as information about historic diet, with potential impact for living populations. </p>
<p>But building museum bone collections also represented major breaches in ethics surrounding traditional death and burial practices for many indigenous people across the Americas and around the world. For them, data gathering was simply not a priority. Instead, they sought to <a href="http://www.sagchip.org/news/files/PressRelease_2015-05-13.pdf">return their ancestors to the earth</a>. </p>
<p>Considered in context, the concerns raised by many Native Americans are not particularly difficult to comprehend. For example, doing archival research for my book <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674660410">“Bone Rooms,”</a> I learned of the case of several naturally mummified bodies discovered in the American Southwest in the 1870s. The dried corpses were paraded around San Francisco, before being exhibited for the public in Philadelphia and Chicago. Once the immense popularity of the exhibitions died down, the bodies were distributed to several museums across the country where they were put into storage.</p>
<p>Presenting human remains as purely scientific specimens and historical curiosities hurt living descendants by treating entire populations as scientific resources rather than human beings. And by focusing mainly on nonwhite groups, the practice reinforced in subtle and direct ways the scientific racism permeating the era. While some European American skeletons were collected by these museums for comparative purposes, their number was vastly outpaced by the number of Native American bodies collected during this same period.</p>
<p>Anthropologists and other scientists have worked to address some of these negative legacies. But the vestiges of past wrongdoings have left their mark on many museums across the country. Returning ancestral human remains, sacred artifacts and <a href="http://www.mohegan.nsn.us/press-room/recent-press-releases/press-release/2014/12/19/repatriation#">special objects</a> considered to hold collective cultural value attempts to serve as partial redress for these problematic histories.</p>
<h2>Kennewick Man’s odyssey</h2>
<p>Inaccurate initial media reports muddled the Kennewick Man story. After the first anthropologist who looked at the skull proclaimed a resemblance to European Americans (specifically the actor Patrick Stewart), a New York Times headline in 1998 announced, “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/02/us/old-skull-gets-white-looks-stirring-dispute.html?pagewanted=all">Old Skull Gets White Looks, Stirring Dispute</a>.” Indeed, as the paper commented, the bogus reports leading people to believe Kennewick Man might be a white person “heightened an already bitter and muddled battle over the rights to Kennewick Man’s remains and his origins.”</p>
<p>Hidden away from public view, the prehistoric remains were anything but forgotten. Many indigenous people came to view Kennewick Man as a symbol for the failings of the new NAGPRA law.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123270/original/image-20160519-4451-xz2oo8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123270/original/image-20160519-4451-xz2oo8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123270/original/image-20160519-4451-xz2oo8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123270/original/image-20160519-4451-xz2oo8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123270/original/image-20160519-4451-xz2oo8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123270/original/image-20160519-4451-xz2oo8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123270/original/image-20160519-4451-xz2oo8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123270/original/image-20160519-4451-xz2oo8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1125&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Forensic anthropologists at the National Museum of Natural History examined Kennewick Man during 16 days of study in 2005 and 2006.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://newsdesk.si.edu/photos/kennewick-man-1">Chip Clark, Smithsonian Institution</a></span>
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</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.tamupress.com/product/Kennewick-Man,7921.aspx">Some scientists</a>, on the other hand, made impassioned arguments that the bones did not fall under the purview of the new rules. Their extreme age meant the remains were unlikely to be a direct ancestor of any living group. Following this logic, several influential scientists argued the bones should therefore be available for scientific study. Indeed, <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/kennewick-man-finally-freed-share-his-secrets-180952462/">extensive scientific tests</a> were carried out on the skeleton. </p>
<p>Two years after his discovery, Kennewick Man moved to the behind-the-scenes bone rooms at the Burke Museum on the campus of the University of Washington in Seattle. The long tradition of gathering and interpreting human bones in museums made the decision seem almost natural. Still, it proved a highly problematic (and temporary) “solution” for many Native Americans who wanted the remains buried.</p>
<p>Last year, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/19/science/new-dna-results-show-kennewick-man-was-native-american.html">genetic testing finally proved</a> something many people had suggested for some time: Kennewick Man is <a href="http://doi.org/10.1038/nature14625">more closely related to Native Americans</a> than any other living human group.</p>
<h2>Reconciling scientific curiosity with scientific ethics</h2>
<p>Should human remains – including the rare, ancient or abnormal bodies sometimes considered especially valuable for science – ever be made into scientific specimens without their approval or that of their descendants? If we do choose to collect and study them for science, who controls the knowledge drawn from these bodies? </p>
<p>These are big questions. I argue that the effort to scientize the dead brings about distinct and specific responsibilities unique to human remains collections. Careful consideration is necessary. Cultural and historical context simply cannot be ignored. </p>
<p>By some estimates, museums today house <a href="http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/161946">more than half a million</a> individual Native American remains. Probably hundreds if not thousands of sets of skeletal remains will face these big questions in the coming decades.</p>
<p>Indicative of changing attitudes and ethical approaches to museum exhibition, recent calls to display Kennewick Man’s remains have largely been rebuked, despite potential for engaging large audiences. The prospect for new knowledge or effective popular education is tantalizing, but these objectives should never eclipse basic human and civil rights.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123269/original/image-20160519-4484-jrxzhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123269/original/image-20160519-4484-jrxzhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123269/original/image-20160519-4484-jrxzhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123269/original/image-20160519-4484-jrxzhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123269/original/image-20160519-4484-jrxzhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123269/original/image-20160519-4484-jrxzhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123269/original/image-20160519-4484-jrxzhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/123269/original/image-20160519-4484-jrxzhj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Museums across the country still have human remains in their bone rooms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wonderlane/4289519889">Wonderlane</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Two-and-a-half decades after NAGPRA, museums in the United States – including the American Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History – join the Burke Museum in continuing to maintain sizable human remains collections. Kennewick Man may be among the most high-profile cases of human remains going under the microscope – both in terms of the scientific study he was subject to and the intensity of the debate surrounding him – but he is certainly far from alone.</p>
<p>Skeletons wait patiently while the living attempt to work these problems out, but this patience is granted only because the bones have no other choice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59219/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Samuel Redman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A 9,000-year-old skeleton became a high-profile and highly contested case for the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. How do we respectfully deal with ancient human remains?Samuel Redman, Assistant Professor of History, UMass AmherstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/570242016-04-08T09:33:55Z2016-04-08T09:33:55ZReconsidering Body Worlds: why do we still flock to exhibits of dead human beings?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117546/original/image-20160405-28973-55sy9d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A morbid curiosity makes it hard not to be fascinated.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/yelp/14780580568">Yelp Inc.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Dr. Gunther von Hagens started using “<a href="http://www.bodyworlds.com/en/plastination/idea_plastination.html">plastination</a>” in the 1970s to preserve human bodies, he likely did not anticipate the wild success of the <em><a href="http://www.bodyworlds.com/en.html">Body Worlds</a></em> exhibitions that stem from his creation. <em>Body Worlds</em> has since hosted millions of visitors to its exhibits, including six spin-offs. The offshoots include a version on vital organs and another featuring plastinated animal remains. The process replaces natural bodily fluids with polymers that harden to create odorless and dry “specimens.” </p>
<p>Frozen in place, plastinated remains in the exhibits are rigidly posed – both for dramatic effect and to illustrate specific bodily features. Over 40 million museum visitors have <a href="http://www.bodyworlds.com/en/exhibitions/unparalleled_succress.html">encountered these exhibitions</a> in more than 100 different locations worldwide. Even copycat exhibits have taken off, eschewing <a href="http://www.aam-us.org/resources/assessment-programs/accreditation">accredited museums</a> in favor of places like the <a href="https://www.luxor.com/en/entertainment/bodies-the-exhibition.html">Luxor Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas</a>.</p>
<p>But <em>Body Worlds</em> – though seemingly an entirely modern phenomenon only made possible with futuristic plastic technology – <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674660410">emerges from a long tradition</a> of popular exhibits featuring actual and simulated human remains. What continues to draw so many people to human body exhibitions – even today?</p>
<h2>Early exhibits of human bodies</h2>
<p>For nearly as long as physicians and anatomists have attempted to understand the body, they have attempted to preserve, illustrate and present it. Cabinets of curiosities displayed in the homes of European nobility in the 16th century frequently included human skulls. As civic museums emerged in cities throughout Europe and the United States, some began to formally organize collections around anatomical questions. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117867/original/image-20160407-16252-uhfbbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117867/original/image-20160407-16252-uhfbbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117867/original/image-20160407-16252-uhfbbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117867/original/image-20160407-16252-uhfbbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117867/original/image-20160407-16252-uhfbbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117867/original/image-20160407-16252-uhfbbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117867/original/image-20160407-16252-uhfbbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117867/original/image-20160407-16252-uhfbbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Hyrtl Skull Collection at the Mütter Museum continues to be displayed together. Recently, the museum organized a ‘Save Our Skulls’ fundraising campaign in order to better conserve the collection.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://muttermuseum.org/proprietary-media/">George Widman, 2009, for the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Medical museums were often more interested in pathologies – abnormal medical conditions or disease. They also collected thousands of skulls and bones, attempting to address basic questions about race. Early on, medical museums were generally closed to the public, instead focusing on training medical students through hands-on experience with specimens. Almost reluctantly, they began opening their doors to the public. Once they did, they were surprised by the relatively large number of visitors curiously entering their galleries.</p>
<p>Medical museums were not the sole institutions housing and displaying remains, however. Collections aimed more squarely at the general public often included such items as well. The Army Medical Museum, for instance, located along the National Mall, exhibited human remains between 1887 and the 1960s (living on as the <a href="http://www.medicalmuseum.mil/">National Museum of Health and Medicine</a>). The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History built its own large body collections, especially during the early 20th century. Popular exhibits at the American Museum of Natural History exhibited human remains in New York City just steps from Central Park.</p>
<p>Notable exhibits featuring human remains or innovative reproductions were also wildly popular at World’s Fairs, including Chicago (1893), St. Louis (1904) and San Diego (1915), among many others. People crowded galleries even as these exhibits proved vexing to critics.</p>
<h2>Troubling transition from person to specimen</h2>
<p>In the quest to rapidly build collections, remains were sometimes collected under highly questionable ethical circumstances. Bodies were removed from graves and sold, gathered from hospitals near <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16295827">exhibitions reminiscent of human zoos</a>, and rounded up haphazardly from battlefields.</p>
<p>In the United States, the human body in the late 19th and early 20th century was racialized in almost every respect imaginable. Many people became <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520211681">obsessed with the supposed differentiations</a> between Native Americans, African Americans and European Americans – occasionally stretching claims into rigid hierarchies of humankind. The exhibitions dehumanized bodies by casting them as observable data points rather than actual human beings. </p>
<p>Some exhibits blended medical science and racial science in a bizarrely inaccurate manner. Medical doctors supported eugenics groups organizing temporary exhibits comparing hair and skulls from different apes and nonwhite humans, underscoring popular notions about the supposedly primitive nature of those outside of Western civilization. To our modern eyes, these attempts are obviously stained by scientific racism.</p>
<p>Eventually, the racialized science that had led to collecting thousands of skulls and other bones from people around the world came under increased scrutiny. The comparative study of race – dominating many early displays of human remains – was largely discredited. </p>
<p>Indigenous activists, tired of seeing <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Give-Me-My-Fathers-Body/dp/061345765X">their ancestors viewed as “specimens,”</a> also began pushing back against their display. Some exhibit planners began seeking other methods – including more sophisticated models – and exhibiting actual human remains became less prominent. </p>
<p>By midcentury it was less common to display actual human remains in museum exhibits. The occasional Egyptian mummy notwithstanding, museum remains were largely relegated behind the scenes to bone rooms.</p>
<h2>Specimen exhibits fade, temporarily</h2>
<p>With largely unfounded concern, museum administrators, curators and other critics worried audiences would be disgusted when shown vivid details about human anatomy. Gradually, as medical illustrations became better and easier to reproduce in textbooks, the need for demonstrations with real “specimens” seemed to dissipate.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117888/original/image-20160407-16260-13ii44p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117888/original/image-20160407-16260-13ii44p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117888/original/image-20160407-16260-13ii44p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117888/original/image-20160407-16260-13ii44p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117888/original/image-20160407-16260-13ii44p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117888/original/image-20160407-16260-13ii44p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117888/original/image-20160407-16260-13ii44p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117888/original/image-20160407-16260-13ii44p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Popular Science described a model from the 1939 World’s Fair, an alternative to real human specimens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/tunnelbug/5419965583">Popular Science</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>First displayed at a World’s Fair in Chicago in 1933, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=jikDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA56#v=onepage&q&f=false">see-through models of the human body</a> became a favorite attraction at medical exhibits in years to come. Models replicated actual human body parts rather than displaying them in preserved form. Exhibits were sometimes animated with light shows and synchronized lectures.</p>
<p>Later, in the 1960s, new transparent models were created for popular education. Eventually, some of the many transparent medical models wound up in science museums. Although popular, it remains unclear how effective the models were in either teaching visitors or inspiring them to learn more about the human body.</p>
<p>Over the years, methods for teaching anatomy shifted. Many medical museums even closed permanently. Those that could not dispose of collections by destroying them donated or sold them. Human body exhibits generally faded from public consciousness.</p>
<p>But after decades of declining visitor numbers, something surprising started happening at one of the nation’s most important medical museums. The <a href="http://muttermuseum.org">Mütter Museum’s displays</a> continued to draw heavily from its human remains collections even as similar institutions moved away from such exhibits. From the mid-1980s to 2007, the number of visitors entering the Mütter’s galleries grew from roughly 5,000 visitors per year to more than 60,000. Today, the museum is the most visited small museum in Philadelphia, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Medical-Museums-Past-Present-Future/dp/1904096212">hosting over 130,000 visitors annually</a>. </p>
<p>When <em>Body Worlds</em> began touring museums in the mid-1990s, it tapped into a curiosity in the U.S. that has probably always existed – a fascination with death and the human body.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117887/original/image-20160407-16254-rmz4ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117887/original/image-20160407-16254-rmz4ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117887/original/image-20160407-16254-rmz4ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117887/original/image-20160407-16254-rmz4ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117887/original/image-20160407-16254-rmz4ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117887/original/image-20160407-16254-rmz4ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117887/original/image-20160407-16254-rmz4ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/117887/original/image-20160407-16254-rmz4ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It can be hard to remember this was once a living, breathing person.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pss/2252443224">Paul Stevenson</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Adding a gloss of scientization to the dead</h2>
<p>People are very often unsettled by seeing what were once living, breathing, human beings – people with emotions and families – turned into scientific specimens intended for public consumption. Despite whatever discomfort emerges, however, the curious appeal of medicalized body displays at public museums lingers, enough so to make them consistently appealing as fodder for popular exhibitions.</p>
<p><em>Body Worlds</em> states “health education” is its “primary goal,” elaborating that the bodies in exhibits are posed to suggest that we as humans are “<a href="http://www.bodyworlds.com/en/exhibitions/mission_exhibitions.html">naturally fragile in a mechanized world</a>.”</p>
<p>The exhibits are partially successful in achieving that mission. In tension with the message about human fragility, though, is the desire to preserve them by preventing their natural decay through technology.</p>
<p>With <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/08/health-class-no-longer-re_n_227805.html">public schools cutting health programs</a> in classrooms around the United States, it stands to reason people might seek this kind of body knowledge elsewhere. Models are never quite as uniquely <a href="https://archive.org/details/Responses_to_a_Human_Remains_Collection">appealing as actual flesh and bone</a>.</p>
<p>But while charged emotional responses have the potential to heighten curiosity, they can also inhibit learning. While museum administrators voiced concern that visitors would be horrified viewing actual human bodies on exhibit, the public has instead proven to have an almost insatiable thirst for seeing scientized dead.</p>
<p>In the face of this popularity, museums must fully consider the special implications and problems with these exhibitions when choosing to display human bodies.</p>
<p>One basic concern relates to the exact <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5637687">origins of these bodies</a>. Criticisms elicited an <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jan/23/arts.china">official response from von Hagens</a>. Major ethical differences exist between exhibitions including human remains where permission has been granted in advance by the deceased or through descendants and museum displays revealing bodies of individuals offered no choice in the matter.</p>
<p>Spiritually sacred objects and the remains of past people present unique issues which must be dealt with sensitively and on an individual basis. Cultural and historical context is important. Consulting with living ancestors is critical.</p>
<p>Exhibitors also need to do more to put these displays into greater historical context for visitors. Without it, visitors might mistake artfully posed cadavers as art pieces, which they most assuredly are not.</p>
<p>These are all issues we will likely be grappling with for years to come. If past history is suggestive of future trends, visitors will continue to be drawn to these exhibits as long as the human body remains mysterious and alluring.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57024/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Samuel Redman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>You don’t have to be a physician or anatomist to be curious about how bodies work. Exhibits of dead human specimens have been around for quite a while – capitalizing on our fascination with death.Samuel Redman, Assistant Professor of History, UMass AmherstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/506292015-11-20T04:36:01Z2015-11-20T04:36:01ZHow science has been abused through the ages to promote racism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/102325/original/image-20151118-14189-1mpkamn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Scientific evidence shows overwhelmingly that people across the world are genetic refugees from Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Race in <a href="https://www.cbd.int/gti/taxonomy.shtml">human taxonomy</a> – the science of classifying organisms – has a long, disgraceful history. </p>
<p>Individuals have used race to divide and denigrate certain people while promoting their claims of superiority. Some of these individuals were, and are, respected in their time and their fields. They include philosopher and scientist <a href="http://global.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Boyle">Robert Boyle</a> and sociologists like <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=IWDyVPi6pHgC&pg=PA35&lpg=PA35&dq=Hans+G%C3%BCnther+1891+%E2%80%93+1968&source=bl&ots=-UUgXQRqQO&sig=XAyokkxiY_wknDBWZyJ2GEvzsSU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC0Q6AEwBGoVChMI5KapqZGcyQIVRlkUCh3E1AbV#v=onepage&q=Hans%20G%C3%BCnther%201891%20%E2%80%93%201968&f=false">Hans Günther</a>. Others who’ve been guilty include biologists like <a href="http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/haeckel.html">Ernst Haeckel</a> and historians such as <a href="http://global.britannica.com/biography/Henri-de-Boulainvilliers-comte-de-Saint-Saire">Henri de Boulainvilliers</a>. </p>
<p>What is the history of racially based classifications of humans? And does it have any scientific validity?</p>
<h2>Starting with Kant</h2>
<p>The eminent philosopher <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=TE021UmMiAsC&pg=PA513&lpg=PA513&dq=Immanuel+Kant,+stupid,+trifling&source=bl&ots=FcD4KcVfoq&sig=-2rG2Iqv9Keq2adOa0Wb3PMV6u8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEwQ6AEwCWoVChMIhq7_xpuXyQIVAW8UCh3t5QFM#v=onepage&q=Immanuel%20Kant%2C%20stupid%2C%20trifling&f=false">Immanuel Kant</a> was arguably the first “scientific racist”. He maintained that dark-skinned Africans were “vain and stupid”. He insisted that they were only capable of trifling feelings and were resistant to any form of education other than learning how to be enslaved.</p>
<p>By contrast, Kant maintained, light-skinned Caucasians were “active, acute, and adventurous”. </p>
<p>Renowned German anthropologist <a href="https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/johann-friedrich-blumenbach-1752-1840">Johann Blumenbach</a> used skull anatomy to divide humans into five races:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Caucasians (Europe and western Asia);</p></li>
<li><p>Mongoloids (eastern Asia);</p></li>
<li><p>Malays (south-eastern Asia);</p></li>
<li><p>Negros (sub-Saharan Africa); and</p></li>
<li><p>Americans (North and South America).</p></li>
</ul>
<p>But he disagreed with the common view that humans from sub-Saharan Africa were inferior. Blumenbach’s “benign” racial categorisation persisted well into the 20th century.</p>
<p><a href="http://global.britannica.com/biography/Samuel-Morton">Samuel Morton</a> drew on refined, quantitative assessments of skull anatomy to provide further “scientific evidence”. He claimed that interracial intellectual variation is reflected by the interior volume of the skull, and that this justified the use of Blumenbach’s groupings to determine relative racial superiority. </p>
<p>He regarded the Caucasian as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… distinguished by the facility with which it attains the highest intellectual endowments</p>
</blockquote>
<p>and Africans as</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… joyous, flexible, and indolent; while the many nations which compose this race present a singular diversity of intellectual character, of which the far extreme is the lowest grade of humanity. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Scientific racism”“ was used to justify the ownership of <a href="http://abolition.e2bn.org/slavery_40.html">slaves</a>, as well as colonialism. It reached its pinnacle in eugenics, a "science” espoused by the British statistician and sociologist <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11700278">Francis Galton</a> at the end of the 19th century. </p>
<p>Eugenicists advocate the “improvement” of humanity by promoting reproduction between people with desired traits and reducing reproduction between people with less-desired traits. Eugenics featured in race-related legislation like Nazi Germany’s <a href="http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007695">Nuremberg Laws</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/apartheid-and-reactions-it">apartheid-era</a> South Africa’s edicts.</p>
<h2>Genetic evidence</h2>
<p>Genetic studies have examined “racial” variation from a molecular perspective. My early mentor <a href="http://sandwalk.blogspot.co.za/2008/07/good-science-writersrichard-lewontin.html">Richard Lewontin</a>, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Chicago, was a pioneer in this. His research suggested that 90% of modern human genetic diversity is found between individuals within populations. The tiny balance is due to variation between populations. </p>
<p>This view was confirmed by subsequent studies based on DNA by, among others, <a href="http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html">Lynn B. Jorde and Stephen P. Wooding</a>. The DNA among all human populations is 99.5% similar. Populations of the geographically much more restricted chimpanzee exhibit more than four times the <a href="http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/skin-color/modern-human-diversity-genetics">genetic variation</a> that’s found between human populations. Chimpanzees are humans’ nearest living evolutionary “relative”.</p>
<p>Their research shows that when humans are studied from genetic or anatomical perspectives, the pattern that’s discovered is not diagnosable geographically discrete clusters. The norm is gradual, geographically uncorrelated variation in traits and genes. This is even true within peoples who are traditionally thought to be racially homogeneous. There is no evidence of evolutionarily significant racial variation in either genes or anatomy. </p>
<p>The exception is skin colour. Around 10% of the variance in skin colour occurs <a href="http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/skin-color/modern-human-diversity-skin-color">within groups</a> and about 90% between groups. People living near the equator have darker, more melanin-rich skin than those who live at higher latitudes. Darker skin is strongly selected for because it is a natural sunscreen that limits harmful effects of high ultraviolet rays. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520275898">Recent genetic studies</a> indicate that skin colour may change radically within 100 generations because of natural selection.</p>
<h2>Genetic racism revived</h2>
<p>This overwhelming scientific evidence has not prevented recent studies based on <a href="http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/glossary=allele">DNA allele frequencies</a> from claiming that there are as many as <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12493913">eight races of humans</a>. </p>
<p>British scientific journalist <a href="http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/a-troubling-tome">Nicholas Wade</a> used these studies to claim that natural selection between “races” produced differences in IQ, the efficacy of political institutions and countries’ levels of economic development. </p>
<p>These genetic studies are fundamentally flawed for three reasons: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>Taxonomic studies aimed at determining the validity of races should be based on characters. These are features that are invariant within populations. They should not be based on traits like eye colour and gene alleles, which vary within populations.</p></li>
<li><p>Samples used in the DNA-based studies mentioned above were “cherry picked” geographically to maximise differentiation between human populations, and </p></li>
<li><p>The DNA-based evolutionary racial “trees” were generated by a statistical technique that is designed to produce tree-like patterns which reflect average, not absolute, differences between sampled items. This technique formed the basis of an approach to the construction of evolutionary trees called “phenetics”. It has been decisively discredited and generally abandoned.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Evolutionary origins</h2>
<p>DNA and anatomy-based findings support the <a href="http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo/homo_2.htm">“Out of Africa” theory</a>. This holds that modern humans originated in Africa. Archaic African Homo erectus immigrated into Eurasia between 1.4 million to 1.6 million years ago. </p>
<p>About 90,000 to 92,000 years ago, a second form of humanity, modern H. sapiens, also emigrated out of Africa. This species replaced populations of Homo erectus already in the north. </p>
<p>Attempts to justify the scientific reality of human races warrant no further discussion. They cannot be used to assess racial “superiority”. “White” and other non-African people are in fact evolutionary refugees from Africa. After settling in Eurasia, it took only an evolutionary heartbeat for them to lose much of their epidermal melanin. </p>
<p>Dark-skinned humans outside of Africa are descended from migrants who “regained” their “blackness” in <a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/charles/562_f2011/Week%201/Jablonski%202004.pdf">equatorial regions</a> elsewhere.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/50629/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>While he was an academic at the University of Cape Town, his and his students' research was supported by South Africa's National Science Foundation, in some instance in collaboration with other international agencies.</span></em></p>Despite science refuting the existence of different human races, people have used “race” throughout history to divide and denigrate certain people while promoting their claims of superiority.Tim Crowe, Emeritus Professor, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.