African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man (Robert Ardrey's Nature of Man series Book 1) by Ardrey Robert

Author:Ardrey, Robert [Ardrey, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: STORYDESIGN LTD.
Published: 2014-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

I was dizzy with bones, and totally convinced. Significant evidence for the systematic use of weapons at a pre-human level of evolution existed in this roomful of bones. If the concept of the weapon had been part of our animal legacy, then our devotion to the weapon must be reckoned as a probable animal instinct. And politics and philosophy, education and psychiatry must alike grapple with the speculative consequences.

Dart and I were gripped by a fury of excitement. We retired to his upper-floor office, that lonely outpost of non-conformity at the wrong end of the world. We discussed plans. This was March, and my article for The Reporter would be published sometime during the northern spring. The schedule fitted well with Dart’s, since in July the Pan-African Congress in Prehistory would meet at Livingstone, in Northern Rhodesia. It was a quadrennial meeting to which some hundred anthropologists would be coming from four continents and towards which Dart had been shaping his study for the past two years. The packing boxes which I had observed in the roomful of bones were being prepared already with the specimens to be shipped to Livingstone. The chart which I had studied was the statistical evidence which he would submit to the Congress. The little, wild-west, Northern Rhodesian town, only a few miles from Victoria Falls, would witness one of the most sensational events in modern anthropology.

By May I was back in the United States and my article had been published in The Reporter . Despite my compelling ignorance of the African Pleistocene, of Villafranchian fauna, of the vagaries of ancient dating, and of anatomy other than my own, there emerged with fair clarity the basic proof of Raymond Dart’s thesis. The article was a success, and in succeeding months was reprinted in several digests. I was confident that nothing remained now but inevitable acceptance at the Livingstone meeting. I returned to my normal life which involved throughout that particular summer getting thoroughly lost in Europe. I did not return again to the United States until September. And there awaiting me was a letter in Dart’s formidable hand. The ink was blue; it should rather have been blood.

The Congress had lasted for five days. Dart had been allotted twenty minutes. He had presented his vast subject as well as he could in the time. There had been two or three questions, no more. Some of the eminent visitors had taken a look at his carefully arranged exhibit of specimens; the majority had not. The general reaction had been that hyenas, not the southern ape, had collected the bones. The Chairman, concluding the brief discussion, had commented that one must be very cautious of conclusions drawn from cave deposits.

Raymond Dart is a robust man. The Livingstone Congress had swept his six-year study back into the unreported darkness of the African limbo. But the letter described other developments. The Smithsonian Institution had read my Reporter piece and had requested a full account for its annual report. And a wealthy manufacturer of machine tools had appeared at the Livingstone meeting with Dr.

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