How the Taung Baby Shook the Scientific World

Almost 100 years before calls to abolish science, Tong was challenging researchers to reexamine their internal biases.

In 2025 the Tong Bachi turns 100 years old, officially making it an antique. Why was it so important and how did it turn the nascent field of paleoanthropology on its head?

By the end of the 19th century, the principles of evolution were widely accepted in the scientific world. Although many fossils were discovered, our own species was haunted by its origins.

Big brain

In 1880, a Homo erectus, the Java man, was discovered in Indonesia. Looking at this pattern, scientists concluded that the only way this clumsy, senseless, strange creature could possibly have survived was through superior intelligence. Early humans, they decided, would be characterized by large brains.

This was reinforced by the discovery of the pull down man in England in 1912. The creature had a large human-like skull (just as it turned out) and an ape-like jaw. However, the most important feature of Pull Down Man was the location. Scientists of the time, almost exclusively European men, believed in themselves as a completely superior race and the idea that the origin of man would find a direct path to them.

African origin

Enter Raymond Dart in 1925, then head of the newly commissioned Wits Medical School, who announced the discovery of the African ape-man (Australopithecus africanus), who became known as Tong Child. The fossil was discovered by workers in a limestone quarry in the Northern Cape. It belonged to a newborn baby, and while it had many of the features scientists were looking for, it had a small brain.

Some members of the scientific community did not react favorably to this discovery and Dart was discredited and shunned on all fronts. It took 20 years of persistence, supported by the discovery of many fossils in southern and eastern Africa, which show that the large brain is a later development in human evolution. However, it was the exposure of Pulldown Man as a fraud that really put the nail in the coffin of European claims.

Disturbing beliefs

Today, Africa is widely regarded as the cradle of humanity. The discovery of the Taung fossil influenced debates on human origins—not because of it, but because it challenged what people wanted to believe. As recent history has shown, this is an ongoing process that South African paleoanthropology will continue to advance.