Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion (3 page)
Authors: Edward J. Larson
BOOK: Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion
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At the time, the popular debate over the status of evolution as science centered largely on the interpretation of fossils. Various types of scientific evidence supported the theory, but short of actually observing the development of new kinds of plants or animals, intermediate fossils linking related species offered the most persuasive “proof” of evolution. Proponents particularly relied on the remarkably complete collection of fossils tracing the development of the American horse over three million years, while opponents harped on the “missing links,” especially between humans and other primates. For example, Bryan’s chief adversary in the creation-evolution controversy from the scientific viewpoint, American Museum of Natural History president Henry Fairfield Osborn, regularly referred to the equine fossils in his many popular articles, books, and lectures countering the antievolution crusade. “It would not be true to say that the evolution of man rests upon evidence as complete as that of the horse,” he conceded in a 1922 exchange with Bryan, but “the very recent discovery of Tertiary man ... constitutes the most convincing answer to Mr. Bryan’s call for more evidence.” Tracing humanity’s family tree, Osborn added, “Nearer to us is the Piltdown man, found [in] England; still nearer in geologic time is the Heidelberg man, found on the Neckar River; still nearer is the Neanderthal man, whom we know all about.... This chain of human ancestors was totally unknown to Darwin. He could not have even dreamed of such a flood of proof and truth.”
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The expert witnesses summoned by Darrow to Dayton brought this evidence with them, complete with models of the hominid fossils. In the scientific affidavits prepared for the defense, for example, anthropologist Fay-Cooper Cole, geologist Kirtley F. Mather, and zoologist H. H. Newman detailed hominid development through fossils from Java, Piltdown, Heidelberg, and elsewhere. Although Piltdown man later lost his place in the human family tree, Cole added a new find, “made only a few months ago in Bechuanaland of South Africa,” purportedly of a being intermediate between humans and anthropoids. “There is nothing peculiar or exceptional about the fossil record of man. It is considerably less complete than that of the horse, ... but it is far more complete than that of birds,” Newman asserted. “Much has been said by the antievolutionists about the fragmentary nature of the fossil record of man, but many other animals have left traces far less readily deciphered and reconstructed.”
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Yet Bryan expressed concern only about the teaching of human evolution. “The import of the Tennessee trial is in the presence of Mr. Bryan there,” the
Chicago Tribune
warned at the time. “What he wants is that his ideas, his interpretations and beliefs should be made mandatory. When Mr. Darrow talks of bigotry he talks of that. Bigotry seeks to make opinions and beliefs mandatory.” Bryan’s beliefs did not reject all science, or even all evolutionary theory. “Hands off one thing and one thing alone,” the
Tribune
observed, “the divine creation of man, the human being with a soul. You may not teach that the Piltdown man reveals any relationship to the anthropoid ape.”
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Given the preoccupation of both sides with scientific evidence of humanity’s anthropoidal ancestry, I begin the story here.
Chicago Tribune
warned at the time. “What he wants is that his ideas, his interpretations and beliefs should be made mandatory. When Mr. Darrow talks of bigotry he talks of that. Bigotry seeks to make opinions and beliefs mandatory.” Bryan’s beliefs did not reject all science, or even all evolutionary theory. “Hands off one thing and one thing alone,” the
Tribune
observed, “the divine creation of man, the human being with a soul. You may not teach that the Piltdown man reveals any relationship to the anthropoid ape.”
7
Given the preoccupation of both sides with scientific evidence of humanity’s anthropoidal ancestry, I begin the story here.
PART I
BEFORE ...
—CHAPTER ONE—
DIGGING UP CONTROVERSY
A
S THE SCIENTIFIC world prepared to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Charles Darwin’s
Origin of Species
in 1909, an amateur English geologist named Charles Dawson made a momentous find thirty miles from Darwin’s country home in southern England. From a laborer digging in a gravel pit on a farm near Piltdown Common, Sussex, Dawson received a small fragment of a human cranium’s parietal bone. “It was not until some years later, in the autumn of 1911, on a visit to the spot, that I picked up, among the rain-washed spoilheaps of the gravel-pit, another and larger piece belonging to the frontal region of the same skull,” Dawson later reported in an article that shook the scientific world. “As I had examined a cast of the Heidelberg jaw, it occurred to me that the proportions of this skull were similar to those of that specimen.”
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This caught his attention. At the time, the Heidelberg jaw represented one of the only two known fossil remains that scientists then attributed to hominid species ancestral to modern humans. Each of these known remains—the jawbone from near Heidelberg, Germany, and a skullcap, three teeth, and a thighbone discovered in Java—had been found during the preceding two decades and remained the subject of intense scientific controversy. The better-known Neanderthal (or Mousterian) “cave men” contributed little to the story of human evolution because they came from a later era, were fully human, and died out. The Piltdown skull, however, could provide the notorious “missing link” in human evolution.
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S THE SCIENTIFIC world prepared to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Charles Darwin’s
Origin of Species
in 1909, an amateur English geologist named Charles Dawson made a momentous find thirty miles from Darwin’s country home in southern England. From a laborer digging in a gravel pit on a farm near Piltdown Common, Sussex, Dawson received a small fragment of a human cranium’s parietal bone. “It was not until some years later, in the autumn of 1911, on a visit to the spot, that I picked up, among the rain-washed spoilheaps of the gravel-pit, another and larger piece belonging to the frontal region of the same skull,” Dawson later reported in an article that shook the scientific world. “As I had examined a cast of the Heidelberg jaw, it occurred to me that the proportions of this skull were similar to those of that specimen.”
1
This caught his attention. At the time, the Heidelberg jaw represented one of the only two known fossil remains that scientists then attributed to hominid species ancestral to modern humans. Each of these known remains—the jawbone from near Heidelberg, Germany, and a skullcap, three teeth, and a thighbone discovered in Java—had been found during the preceding two decades and remained the subject of intense scientific controversy. The better-known Neanderthal (or Mousterian) “cave men” contributed little to the story of human evolution because they came from a later era, were fully human, and died out. The Piltdown skull, however, could provide the notorious “missing link” in human evolution.
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Dawson now began rummaging through the gravel pit in earnest. After uncovering flint tools and the fossil remains of various prehistoric animals, he took the lot to the paleontologist Arthur Smith Woodward of the British Museum in London. Soon Woodward was in Piltdown with Dawson conducting a systematic excavation of the site. During the summer of 1912, they found more fragments of the Piltdown skull, additional prehistoric animal fossils mixed with human tools, and part of a jawbone with two intact molars. These pieces carried tremendous potential significance. Owing to its size and shape, the cranium clearly came from a hominid. The flint tools reinforced this conclusion. The animal remains and the geology of the site suggested that the skull dated from the Pleistocene epoch, at some point midway between the supposed date of the so-called ape-man of Java and the emergence of modern humans. The jaw, however, appeared to come from a type of ape never known to have lived in Europe, and the teeth were worn down in a human fashion. Pieced together by Woodward, the picture emerged of a new species of extinct hominid that he called
Eoanthropus dawsoni,
or the “dawn man” of Piltdown.
Eoanthropus dawsoni,
or the “dawn man” of Piltdown.
Dawson and Woodward unveiled their discovery on December 18, 1912, before a packed house of Britain’s scientific elite at the Geological Society of London. “While the skull, indeed, is essentially human, and approaching the lower grade in certain characters of the brain,” they explained at the time, “the mandebile appears to be almost precisely that of an ape, with nothing human except the molar teeth.” After describing their find in great detail and fitting it into the sequence of other known fossil remains, Dawson and Woodward concluded, “It tends to support the theory that Mousterian man was a degenerate offshoot of early man, and probably became extinct; while surviving man may have arisen directly from the primitive source of which the Piltdown skull provides the first discovered evidence.”
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Sir Arthur Keith, one of the world’s leading experts on human antiquity and anatomy, attended the presentation by Dawson and Woodward, and generally concurred in their conclusions, as did the renowned neurologist Grafton Elliot Smith and the famed biologist Boyd Dawkins. Perhaps Dawkins best expressed the collective response of the learned audience when he declared during the discussion period, “The evidence was clear that this discovery revealed a missing link between man and the higher apes.”
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Sir Arthur Keith, one of the world’s leading experts on human antiquity and anatomy, attended the presentation by Dawson and Woodward, and generally concurred in their conclusions, as did the renowned neurologist Grafton Elliot Smith and the famed biologist Boyd Dawkins. Perhaps Dawkins best expressed the collective response of the learned audience when he declared during the discussion period, “The evidence was clear that this discovery revealed a missing link between man and the higher apes.”
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Word of the discovery became front-page news throughout the United States, where prominent creationists still publicly denounced the Darwinian theory of human evolution. Relying on a special same-day cable transcript, the
New York Times
published a summary of Dawson and Woodward’s initial presentation within hours of the event. “Paleolithic Skull Is a Missing Link,” the
Times
headline proclaimed, “Bones Probably Those of a Direct Ancestor of Modern Man.”
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A day later, the
Times
followed up with a telegraphic interview of Woodward. “Hitherto the nearest approach to a species from which we might have been said to descend that had been discovered was the cave-man,” Woodward observed in this interview, “but the authorities constantly asserted that we did not spring direct from the cave-man. Where, then, was the missing link in the chain of our evolution? To me, at any rate, the answer lies in the Piltdown skull, for we came directly from a species almost entirely ape.”
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Other American newspapers carried similar reports.
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New York Times
published a summary of Dawson and Woodward’s initial presentation within hours of the event. “Paleolithic Skull Is a Missing Link,” the
Times
headline proclaimed, “Bones Probably Those of a Direct Ancestor of Modern Man.”
5
A day later, the
Times
followed up with a telegraphic interview of Woodward. “Hitherto the nearest approach to a species from which we might have been said to descend that had been discovered was the cave-man,” Woodward observed in this interview, “but the authorities constantly asserted that we did not spring direct from the cave-man. Where, then, was the missing link in the chain of our evolution? To me, at any rate, the answer lies in the Piltdown skull, for we came directly from a species almost entirely ape.”
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Other American newspapers carried similar reports.
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The
New York Times
concluded its coverage of the Piltdown discovery with an extended, page-one summary of the episode, appearing in its next Sunday edition. “Darwin Theory Is Proved True,” proclaimed the banner headline. “English Scientists Say the Skull Found in Sussex Establishes Human Descent from Apes.” This article reprinted Keith’s observation that the discovery “gives us a stage in the evolution of man which we have only imagined since Darwin propounded the theory.”
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Yet an editorial entitled “Simian Man” appearing in that same Sunday edition cautioned readers, “Those who have read the cable dispatches to The Times describing the oldest human skull ... must not confuse this ancient man with the ‘missing link’ or with the ancestry of the present human race. Darwin thought that man was descended from apes, but he searched in vain for the half-man, half-ape.” Although the British scientists quoted in those dispatches clearly saw the new fossil as filling a missing link in the record of human evolution, the
Times
editorial cites their classification of the Piltdown hominid as a distinct species to support the conclusion that “he was no forebear of our Adam.”
9
New York Times
concluded its coverage of the Piltdown discovery with an extended, page-one summary of the episode, appearing in its next Sunday edition. “Darwin Theory Is Proved True,” proclaimed the banner headline. “English Scientists Say the Skull Found in Sussex Establishes Human Descent from Apes.” This article reprinted Keith’s observation that the discovery “gives us a stage in the evolution of man which we have only imagined since Darwin propounded the theory.”
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Yet an editorial entitled “Simian Man” appearing in that same Sunday edition cautioned readers, “Those who have read the cable dispatches to The Times describing the oldest human skull ... must not confuse this ancient man with the ‘missing link’ or with the ancestry of the present human race. Darwin thought that man was descended from apes, but he searched in vain for the half-man, half-ape.” Although the British scientists quoted in those dispatches clearly saw the new fossil as filling a missing link in the record of human evolution, the
Times
editorial cites their classification of the Piltdown hominid as a distinct species to support the conclusion that “he was no forebear of our Adam.”
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This peculiar editorial disavowing a scientific news report reflected the divided mind of the American public, during the years leading up to the Scopes trial, regarding the controversial topic of human evolution. Of course, no single fossil discovery could prove the Darwinian theory of human evolution. As the
New York Times
editorial suggested, evidence that a “simian man” walked the earth in the Pleistocene epoch does not conclusively establish a simian ancestry for modern humans. Yet it fit into a larger pattern. During the first quarter of the twentieth century, scientists in western Europe and the United States accumulated an increasingly persuasive body of evidence supporting a Darwinian view of human origins, and the American people began to take notice. These scientific developments helped set the stage in the early 1920s for a massive crusade by fundamentalists against teaching evolution in public schools, which culminated in the 1925 trial of John Scopes.
New York Times
editorial suggested, evidence that a “simian man” walked the earth in the Pleistocene epoch does not conclusively establish a simian ancestry for modern humans. Yet it fit into a larger pattern. During the first quarter of the twentieth century, scientists in western Europe and the United States accumulated an increasingly persuasive body of evidence supporting a Darwinian view of human origins, and the American people began to take notice. These scientific developments helped set the stage in the early 1920s for a massive crusade by fundamentalists against teaching evolution in public schools, which culminated in the 1925 trial of John Scopes.
The theory that current living species evolved from preexisting species had been around for a long time. More than a century earlier, a well-known French naturalist, the Chevalier de Lamarck, had proposed a theory of progressive evolutionary development based on vital forces within living things and the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Lamarck viewed the various biological species as arranged in an ascending hierarchy from the simplest to the most complex, reflecting a historical pattern of development. Vital forces within living entities prompted their development, allowing each generation to progress beyond the level of complexity of its ancestors. The use or disuse of organs in response to changed environmental conditions further propelled evolutionary progress, according to Lamarck, as living entities passed their acquired characteristics on to their offspring. The giraffe’s neck remains the most famous example of this process. As vegetation became scarcer in their habitat, Lamarck hypothesized, the ancestors of the present-day giraffe stretched their necks to eat the remaining leaves high on trees. The next generation inherited the longer necks and stretched them still further, until a new species of long-neck giraffe evolved.
Although early nineteenth-century scientists generally did not accept Lamarck’s ideas on evolution and held to the creationist concept that each biological species remained fixed over time, many of them did embrace the bold theories of Lamarck’s rival, Georges Cuvier. As curator of vertebrate fossils at the prestigious French Museum of Natural History, Cuvier was the first Enlightenment-era naturalist forced to come to terms with the increasingly complex fossil record then being unearthed by scientific expeditions. This research drove him to acknowledge that the earth had a very long geologic history, far longer than suggested by a literal interpretation of the account in Genesis, and that countless biological species had appeared and become extinct during that long history, despite the traditional scientific and religious view that all species continued over time. Sudden breaks that appeared in the fossil record in which one characteristic group abruptly replaced an earlier one with few transitional forms, coupled with a conviction that living species were too complex to evolve, led Cuvier to conclude that great catastrophes such as worldwide floods or ice ages punctuated geologic history into a series of distinct epochs. Each catastrophe wiped out most or all living things, leaving the earth to repopulate through migration by the few survivors, as Cuvier at first supposed, or new creations of biological species, as later naturalists concluded after wider exploration found no ancient source for modern animals.
Cuvier’s theories quickly came to dominate the geological thinking of the day. Some secular scientists in that era of romanticism and transcendentalism attributed the successive new creations of species to a vital force within nature. Christian geologists, in contrast, saw the hand of God directly at work in these creative acts. Both groups, however, accepted a long geologic history and the progressive appearance of new life forms. For Christians, this posed a conflict with the account in Genesis, which declared that God formed the heavens, the earth, and all kinds of living things in six days, culminating in the creation of Adam and Eve as the forebears of all human beings. In the fifteenth century, the scholarly archbishop James Ussher used internal evidence within Genesis to fix the year of creation at 4004 B.C. Even if they did not adopt this precise year, many later Christians accepted a similar time frame for the creation. In America during the middle part of the nineteenth century, such leading geologists as Amherst College president Edward Hitchcock and Yale’s James D. Dana reconciled contemporary geological opinion with their traditional religious beliefs by interpreting the biblical days of creation as symbolizing geologic ages or, alternatively, by positing a gap in the Genesis account.
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Nineteenth-century Protestants, including many with decidedly conservative views of scriptural authority, readily accepted such accommodations of science and religion. Even the
Scofiel
d
Reference Bible,
which profoundly influenced the development of modern fundamentalism around the turn of the twentieth century, incorporated the “gap theory” into its explanation of Genesis and referred to the “day/age theory” in a footnote.
11
10
Nineteenth-century Protestants, including many with decidedly conservative views of scriptural authority, readily accepted such accommodations of science and religion. Even the
Scofiel
d
Reference Bible,
which profoundly influenced the development of modern fundamentalism around the turn of the twentieth century, incorporated the “gap theory” into its explanation of Genesis and referred to the “day/age theory” in a footnote.
11
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