e pe en

. During the past 25 years the fossil rematns of a whole

group of creatures between apes and men have been found

tn South Africa. A personal account of the discoveries

by Robert Broom

STERKFONTEIN CA YES yielded some of the most sig- Broom and his assistants at the site where they discov-
nificant fossils of the ape-men. This drawing shows Dr. ered an almost perfect skull of a female Plesianthropus.

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© 1949 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC

 HOUGH there were many eminent
T evolutionists before Charles Dar­
win, it was he who il,1 1859 first
convinced the majority of scientists that
man had evolved from some ape or ape­
like being. Of course there were some
who were unconvinced, and even today
there are still a few; but no scientist of
any eminence, so far as I know, would
hold now that man is a special creation.
Some deny that he evolved by "natural
selection" as Darwin suggested, but
every scientist probably is satisfied that
whether man developed gradually or
arose by a sudden mutation, he certainly
came from parents who were apes or
apelike.
Yet who were his ancestors? That
question has preyed on the minds of
evolutionists for the last 90 years. Among
living forms are several which have been
claimed as man's nearest lower relatives.
The gorilla, the largest living primate,
has quite a number of human characters,
and some have claimed him as related to
man's ancestor. The chimpanzee also has
many human resemblances, and possibly
the majority of anthropologists today
would vote for the chimpanzee as man's
nearest relative. The orangutan has a few
human characters not found in the gorilla
or chimpanzee, but it is too specialized
to have many supporters. One eminent
scientist, convinced that none of the an­
thropoid apes is close enough to man, has
come to the conclusion that he evolved
from some unspecialized relative of the
monkeylike little Tarsius of Borneo.
The hunt for the fossil relatives of
man was for years practically barren of
results. The main reason, no doubt, was
that very few scientists worried about
hunting. Most of them found it more
comfortable to sit in their profeSSional
chairs and do nothing-except criticize
the few amateurs who went digging.
In 1889 an ambitious young Dutch
doctor, Eugene Dubois of Amsterdam,
got himself a post in the Dutch East
Indies so he might look for man's ances­
tors. In three years he had found the
famous Pithecanthropus skull, which is
now acknowledged by all anthropolo­
gists to be human. Three other skulls of
the same type have since been found.
In 1907 a German scientist, after a
deliberate search for some years, discov­
ered a very remarkable human jaw at
Heidelberg. This represents another type
of early man. In 1912 the Piltdown skull,
representing still another type, was dis­
covered in the south of England. It has
a relatively large brain, and a jaw which
in a number of characters resembles that
of the anthropoid apes. Then we had the
Peking man, a type allied to the Java
Pithecanthropus. And finally there is the
Rhodesian skull of Africa, another hu­
man type.
All these finds were only skulls of
various types of early man, and threw
little or no light on man's origin. In 1924,
however, came a discovery that opened
a new chapter in the story of man.
Near Taungs in South Africa is a large
lime deposit with a few caves where
fossil bones have been preserved. Nu­
merous skulls of small apes or baboons
had been found in these caves. Toward
the end of 1924 a quarryman named M.
de Bruyn one day blasted out a small
skull which he immediately recognized
as that of a being not unlike man. It was
believed that he had discovered a fossil
Bushman, and the skull was sent to the
anatomist Raymond Dart in Johannes­
burg for his opinion. Dart, after cleaning
and studying the skull, promptly sent off
a paper to London claiming that it was
that of a being intermediate between a
higher ape and man. He called it Austra­
lopithectls afl'icantls.
When the paper appeared, on Febru­
ary 7, 1925, all English and American
scientists who expressed an opinion were
unanimous in declaring that Dart had
made a serious blunder; his little Taungs
skull, they held, was only a variety of
chimpanzee. Immediately after the dis­
covery was announced I went to Johan­
nesburg to see it and made a very care­
ful examination, especially of the teeth.
I was at once convinced that Dart was
essentially correct in his conclusion, and
that this was practically the "missing
link"-the most important fossil find ever
made. I wrote a paper supporting Dart.
The noted paleontologist William J.
Sollas of Oxford University, to whom I
sent a median section of the skull, also
was converted to our view, and became
our strongest ally.
The discussion went on for years, and
some of Dart's opponents treated him
very unfairly. Many in England and
America eventually came around to the
opinion that he was right, but as the skull
was that of a young child, most anthro­
pologists remained unconvinced. The
leading Americ.an physical anthropolo­
gist, Ales Hrdlicka, visited South Africa
in 1925 and examined the skull, but did
not feel able to give a definite opinion.
He said: "Just what relation this fossil
form bears, on the one hand, to the hu­
man phylum, and on the other to the
chimpanzee and gorilla, can only be
properly determined after the specimen
is well identified, for which are needed
additional and adult specimens."
In 1936, having taken a post in the
Transvaal Museum in Pretoria at the
suggestion of General J. C. Smuts, I re­
solved to look for a skull of an adult
Australopithecus. I felt that even if I did
not get what I sought, I was sure at the
least to find other interesting fossil forms
in the rich cave deposits. I started to
work at caves near Pretoria, and imme­
diately found a considerable number of
new fossil mammals. Early in August,
1936, two of Dart's students visited me
and told me of caves at Sterkfontein,
near Krugersdorp, where they had found
© 1949 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC
some small fossil baboon skulls. This
seemed so promising a locality that we
all visited the cave on Sunday, August 9.
T HE caves had been known for over
40 years. Mining operations were be­
ing carried on for impure lime in the de­
posits. G. W. Barlow was the manager
of the quarrying operations and the care­
taker of the caves. He told me that he
had once worked at Taungs, and that he
knew something about the skull. I asked
him if he had ever found anything like
it at Sterkfontein, and he said he rather
thought he had. Any nice bones or skulls
he found he sold to visitors, and had not
worried about what they were. I asked
him to keep a sharp lookout for anything
like an ape-man skull, and he said he
would.
When I visited the caves again three
days later, he handed me three small
baboon skulls and the badly damaged
skull of a saber-toothed tiger. I hunted
among the debris and found more of the
saber-tooth skull and also a nice canine.
The following Monday Barlow handed
me two thirds of a beautiful fossil brain
cast, and asked, "Is this what you are
after?" I replied, "Yes, that's what I am
after." It had been blasted out that
morning, and it was manifestly the brain
cast of a fossil ape-man. I hunted among
the blasted debris for some hours, but
could get no more of the skull except the
cast of the top of it, which I cut out of
the side wall of the cave. Next day, after
some three more hours' hunting, I found
all the base of the skull, both upper jaws,
badly displaced, and some fragments of
the brain case. When the bones were all
cleaned and assembled, we found we
had most of the skull, except for the
lower jaw, of a creature which we even­
tually called Plesianthroplls transvaalen­
sis.
During 1936, 1937 and part of 1938
we found many other remains of this
Sterkfontein ape-man-bits of skulls, iso­
lated teeth and parts of limb bones. (We
now have many skulls and about 130
teeth of Plesianthropus.) We visited the
caves every week, sometimes twice a
week. The native boys were always on
the hunt, and I rarely went to Sterkfon­
tein without bringing back some impor­
tant tooth or bone. Every visit cost some
shillings in tips, but it was worth it.
One June day in 1938, when I arrived
at the workings, Barlow said, "I have
something nice for you this morning,"
and handed me a beautiful palate of a
large ape-man with one molar tooth in
position. I said, "Yes, that is a nice speci­
men. I'll give you a couple of pounds for
it." He was quite pleased, but did not
seem inclined to tell me where he had
got the specimen. The matrix was differ­
ent from that in the Sterkfontein cave,
and I was sure it came from some other
locality. When I insisted on knOWing
where it had com€ from, Barlow told me
21
a schoolboy named Gert Terblanche had
brought it to him from somewhere at
Kromdraai, a farm about two miles
away.
I went to the farm where Gert lived
and found his mother and sister at home.
The sister took me up to the place on a
hill where Gert had broken the skull
with a hammer from an outcrop of bone
breccia deposit. Lying around were a lot
of broken fragments of bone and a few
teeth. The sister told me that Gert had
four teeth with him at school, and she
thought he had some pieces of the skull
hidden away. When I arrived at the
country school and with the principal's
help found Gert playing outdoors, the
boy drew from his trouser pocket four
of the most beautiful fossil teeth ever
found in the world's history. Two of the
four fitted on the palate Barlow had
given me. The other two had been
weathered off. I promptly bought the
teeth from Gert and put them in my
pocket. Gert told me he had another nice
piece hidden away. So with the princi­
pal's delighted agreement I stayed and
lectured to the teachers and pupils on
caves and bones until school was dis­
missed for the day. Then Gert took me
up the hill and drew out from his hiding
place a very fine jaw with some beauti­
ful teeth.
In the next few days we sifted all the
ground in the close neighborhood and
recovered nearly every scrap of tooth or
bone in the place. When all the bits were
cleaned and joined, it was found that
we had the greater part of the left side
and of the right lower jaw of a very fine
skull, with many of the teeth well pre­
served. The skull differed in a number
of characters from that found at Sterk­
fontein, and it had a larger brain. In
some respects it was more human; in a
few, less human. We described it as a
new genus named Pawnthraptts roblls­
tllS.
Some English critics considered that I
was too daring in identifying two en­
tirely new genera on the basis of skulls
which they thought were probably only
adult skulls of the Taungs ape. Julian
Huxley kindly wrote me suggesting cau­
tion. Of course the critics did not know
the whole of the facts. When one has
jealous opponents it does not seem wise
to let them know everything. When
later we found the jaw of a baby Paran­
thropus, we discovered that not only are
the Taungs, Sterkfontein and Kromdraai
ape-men different genera; they perhaps
belong to different subfamilies.
Although work at the caves was al­
most entirely stopped during the war,
we had plenty of material collected to
keep us busy. At the beginning of 1946
a book was published giving a full ac­
count of all the ape-man remains that
had been found up to that date. The
book created a considerable sensation in
the scientific world. The National Acade-
22
my of Sciences in Washington has just
awarded me the Elliot Medal for it,
as the most important work in biology
published in 1946.
N August, 1947, General Smuts
I phoned to ask me to see him. He
recognized that we were discovering the
origin of man, and that the work at the
caves must be carried on. He told me
that whatever money I required would
be provided by the Government. Alas,
as soon as General Smuts had left on a
trip to England and America, our His­
torical Monuments Commission, which
believes it has dictatorial rights to de­
cide who is to be allowed to hunt for
fossils, and how the work is to be done,
intervened and warned me I would not
be allowed to excavate except under
conditions which I regarded as insult­
ing. I was to be allowed to work only in
collaboration with a "competent field
geologist," who was to be consulted
whenever a blast was contemplated. To
continue on such terms was impossible,
and I had to wait till General Smuts re­
turned from America. When he came
back at Christmas he again. phoned me.
He seemed very angry, and told me to
carry on.
I started work at Kromdraai and
worked there for three months. Then
the Historical Monuments Commission
sent me a "permit" to continue work at
Kromdraai. Since they did not send me
a "permit" to work at Sterkfontein, I
immediately stopped work at Kromdraai
and started at Sterkfontein without a
"permit."
At Sterkfontein we found a crushed
palate of a young ape-man and part of
the upper jaw of a baby. On April 18,
1948, a lucky blast revealed a perfect
skull of an adult female. This is the
finest fossil skull ever discovered-more
important than the Pithecanthropus
skull of Java, the jaw of Heidelberg man
or the skulls of Peking man. Those were
all remains of early man. This was the
skull of a being not yet man but nearly
man. The skull is practically human in
all respects, except that the brain is
small-only 480 cubic centimeters.
Of course the discovery was much too
important to please the Historical Monu­
ments Commission, especially as it had
been made by defying them and by
breaking the law. They sent a deputa­
tion to General Smuts protesting that in
my excavations I paid no attention to
stratigraphy and was destroying valu­
able historical evidence required for
dating the specimens. Though there was
no truth in the allegation, I was tempo­
rarily stopped. However, B. V. Lom­
daard, professor of geology at Pretoria
University, was invited to look into the
matter and reported that there was no
stratigraphy whatever where I had been
working, and that I was doing no harm.
So they had to allow me to continue,
© 1949 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC
though still under absurd conditions to
which I pay no attention.
Our next discovery was an almost per­
fect male jaw, the most notable feature
of which is that though the canine tooth
is larger than in man it has been ground
down in line with the other teeth exactly
as in man. This never happens in males
of the anthropoid apes. Then we made
an even more important find-a nearly
perfect pelvis. This structure, human in
all essentials, proves that the ape-men
walked on their hind legs.
In October, 1948, Wendell Phillips of
the University of California Expedition
suggested that I might start work at a
new cave deposit; he would finance the
work and we could share the results. It
seemed to me a good plan. Hundreds of
caves are awaiting exploration. We
started at a promising deposit at Swart­
krans, only a mile from the main Sterk­
fontein cave. Immediately we were
amazingly successful. Within a few days
we discovered a lower jaw of a new type
of ape-man much larger than any we had
known before. I named it Pawnthroplls
crassiclens.
While I was visiting the U. S. last
March and April, my assistant, J. T.
Robinson, discovered at Swartkrans a
beautiful, nearly perfect lower jaw. It
is really huge, possibly larger than the
giant jaw from Java that has been called
Meganthropus by the Dutch anthro­
pologist G. H. R. von Koenigswald. It
almost seems to confirm the view of
the noted anthropologist Franz \;o,Teiden­
reich that "there were giants in the earth
in those days," as stated in Genesis.
A month later Robinson made an even
more important discovery. In a pocket
which must be of later date than the
Swartkrans jaw, he found what appears
to be a human jaw. Though the molar
teeth are a little larger than in H ama
sapiens, they are not unlike those of the
Java early man, Pithecanthropus. The
ramus of the jaw is rather slender, and
as the ascending ramus is low, we may
assume it to be probable that the brain
is nearer to the human type than in the
ape-men.
Since I returned to South Africa sev­
eral months ago we have discovered
three fairly complete but badly crushed
skulls of the Swartkrans ape-men. It is
impossible yet to estimate the size of the
RELATIONSHIPS b e t w e e n t he
skulls, jaws and thigh bones of sever­
al primates are shown in the draw­
ings on the opposite page. The crani­
al capacity of Plesianthropus is not
much larger than that of the chim­
panzee, but the characteristics of the
skull are rather similar to those of
Rhodesian man. The jaws of Paran·
thropus and Plesianthropus are more
massive than that of man. The thigh
bone of Plesianthropus is more like
man's than that of the chimpanzee.
•

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© 1949 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, INC

 brain, but most likely it will prove to be
over 700 c.c.
Meanwhile, at the Makapan Caves
about 180 miles farther north, Dart's
party, working under the Bernard Price
Institute, has made discoveries of equal
importance. They have found a fine oc­
ciput (rear of the skull) of a female, part
of a face, a good lower jaw of a young
male, and part of a pelviS of perhaps the
same young male. These are ape-men of
a different type. Dart has called the
genus Australopithecus prometheus,
meaning fire-maker. I agree that it is a
new type of ape-man, but I do not think
•
there is any good evidence that he made
fire. And I am not satisfied that the sup­
posed bone implements are really imple­
ments, as Dart holds.
As the case stands at present, we have
conclusive evidence that a family of
higher primates which were practically
human, but with relatively small brains,
lived in South Africa for probably hun­
dreds of thousands of years. While some
hold that our various ape-men are all
varieties of one species, my own con­
clusion is that there are five distinct
types. I think it likely that some of the
types date from the Upper Pliocene-and
just possibly the Middle Pliocene. Others
probably survived into the Lower Pleis­
tocene. This dating is at present uncer­
tain; some believe that most of our types
are Pleistocene.
Quite certain it is that our ape-men
ran on their hind feet, and that the hands
were too delicate to have been used for
walking. It seems probable that they dug
out moles and hares with some kind of
implement, and killed small baboons
and dassies (the "conies" of the Bible)
for food. If they made weapons and tools
we may have to call them "men." In any
case they were nearly men. And the
small jaw recently discovered might be
taken as a link between the ape-man and
a true primitive man such as Pithecan­

thropus or the Heidelberg man. If so, the

chain from a being that some consider
to be an anthropoid ape to man would
be complete.
But I personally do not think that the
ape-men are anthropoids. I believe that
the human line split off from the an­
thropoids at least as early as the Lower
Oligocene, perhaps 25 million years ago,
and that the nearest known type to man's
remote ancestor is not a chimpanzeelike
ape but the little fossil ape Propliopithe­
cus of Egypt. I suggest that the ape-men
of South Africa came on a different line
from the higher apes, and that one of
them became the ancestor of Homo
sapiens.
-

Robert Broom is curator

of vertebrate paleontology
PRIMATE FAMILY TREE, as propo sed hy Dr. Broom, places the ape-men and physical anthropology
Australopithecus, Paranthroplls and Plesianthropu8 on the main hranch at the Transvaal Muse­
of human descent. The modern apes came from a fai rly early offshoot. um, Pretoria, South Africa.

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