| First published in STATNews vol. 6, issue 11, September 2003. |
This is a brilliant and comprehensive biography of an outstanding and multi-talented man, whose long life spanned most of the 20th century. It is one man’s journey inwardly and spiritually, and outwardly in the world of prejudices and politics; plus it is a jigsaw puzzle of mankind’s origins. But also for the lay reader it is a travelogue, a treasure hunt and a ‘whodunnit’. Dart was a scientist of distinction, publishing courageously regardless of custom and ceremony, with a genuine zeal for sharing knowledge. Socially, he championed the individual whatever the colour of his skin, whatever his faith, and encouraged women to take an equal role in society. He influenced the worlds of anatomy, palaeoanthropology, medicine and nursing. He was an inspirational teacher, a maker of men, and a mender of minds and muscles. He was a pioneer in every sense and will be particularly remembered for his adventures with the ‘missing link’, and where and when early man first appeared on earth.
I applaud the authors of this book for their dedicated research, for their energy and tenacity - worthy of the great man himself - bringing his long and varied life before us in such a readable form. The 26, chapters (4 being personal recollections of one of the authors) cover his formative years in Australia, his short spell in the Australian Army Medical Corps in World War II, his academic career in South Africa starting in the 1920s, and including his explorations and adventures. Not until Chapter 22, in his later years, does he first encounter the Alexander Technique, and in the last chapter we are told of his further 20 years, starting at age 73, when he divided his time equally between South Africa and the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential in Philadelphia, USA, where a new neurological approach to treat brain-injured children was being investigated.
There are 54 photographs from various periods of his life; the foreword is by Phillip Tobias, his student and successor; and the bibliography includes an impressive list of 246 publications by Dart from 1920-1985, with subjects ranging from fossil man, stone age mining and art, respiratory tract hygiene, double spiralled musculature, malocclusion and weightlessness.
As a reviewer it is hard to know where to begin, and what must inevitably be left out. Perhaps, as this is an Alexander newsletter, I will start with his encounter with the Alexander Technique. It was when he was searching for ways to help his disabled son that he found Irene Tasker, then teaching in Johannesburg. She gave lessons to father and young son together and Dart found “that manipulative demonstrations showed him how exaggerated spinal curvature (manifested as round shoulders) was due to fixation because of improper or unco-ordinated management of his deformation.”
Thus inspired, Dart devised supplementary exercises, later known as the Dart Procedures, and in America he would later contribute invaluable practical methods for the treatment of the physically and mentally impaired. Dart in 1945 took his family - his son now 4 years old - to Makapansgat Valley in the north of South Africa, where he was unearthing fossil man-apes, and while camping he would put his son through his daily, rigorous programme of developmental movements on the cave’s dusty floor. This valley, it has been discovered, has been a place of habitation for millions of years; it was also here that in 1854 the Boers kept chief Makapan and his tribe in a state of siege till they died of starvation and left their bones near those of the early man-apes. Dart during his tenure as Head of Department of Anatomy at the University of Witwatersrand, near Johannesburg, helped a student whose arm had been paralysed since birth. Dart explained that the student’s main pathway from the brain had been destroyed at birth, but he believed there to be a more primitive pathway - still intact - from the brain which could be activated. Dart’s exercises undertaken with the student resembled fish and amphibian movements, rolling from side to side, while the student gave a deep yawn and Dart smacked the paralysed arm against the carpeted floor. The arm was in time transformed into a well developed forearm, bulging with muscles. In 1963, Dart heard of the work of Dr Glen Doman, a physiologist and Dr Carl Delacato, a psychologist, who were treating brain-injured children by stimulating brain cells through the moving of limbs which the children themselves could not activate. The doctors described 13 levels of mobility that they used as a test of success. Dart recognised these as precisely the successive stages by which mankind rose, from four-footed animal to become a unique walking biped with hands freed to manipulate tools and a brain capable of inventing them. Dart observed “the development of the individual does, indeed, recapitulate the evolution of the species.”
Dart was brought up a Methodist; his faith was important to him, as it was to a number of his scientific colleagues, but his views on Man’s evolution did not clash with his faith. Similarly, Dr Robert Broom his great supporter felt (like Alfred Russell Wallace) that a superior intelligence guided Man’s development in a definite direction for a special purpose.
A continuing saga throughout the book is what became known as Dart’s Taung child, discovered and named by Dart as Australopithecus africanus, a new genus and species of ape-man from South Africa. It was a juvenile skull, small brained with milk teeth and bipedal, its age later estimated as 2 1/2 million years, and presently considered to be one of the 20 events that shaped the 20th century. Dart used only hammer and chisels from a local hardware store, calipers and his wife’s sharpened knitting needle to prepare the specimen, and within 40 days and with no dating techniques at that time, Dart was sure enough of his assessment to send his paper for publication to England. Dart was subjected to two decades of vilification by his peers, especially those in the United Kingdom, before he was vindicated. He was regarded as a colonial upstart. He really upset the palaeanthropological apple cart, as it was the misconception of the day that the early origins of Man would be found in Asia and that bipedalism would occur after the development of a large brain and not before. Habitual thought, especially of the eminent English scientists, who were wedded to acceptance of Piltdown Man, took years to change. The eventual exposure of Piltdown as a fake is a scientific whodunnit. You will need to read this book to find out the culprit, who left clues in a trunk in a tower of the Natural History Museum, London!
You will need to read it too to find out how General Jan Smuts, Robert Ardrey the writer of African Genesis, the Pope, the Duke of Windsor (then Prince of Wales) and even King Kong came into Dart’s life; and who used to come home in his underwear, after a collecting trip, fossils wrapped in his suit as there was nothing else to hand; and on another occasion asked a schoolboy to turn out his pockets to reveal new fossil australopithecine teeth!
The title of this book is cleverly apt, referring both to Dart’s character and to his continued occupation of sifting, sieving, excavating and digging out tons of grit to reveal the fossil evidence of mankind’s past.
On reflection, Dart’s life bears a number of parallels to Alexander’s. Both were Australians, who made their mark on the Old World. They were born into large families, Dart’s birth being particularly dramatic as he was born during a flood - the midwife tied him with his mother to the mattress and floated it out through the first floor bedroom window to a waiting rowing boat. Both had delicate health when young, but lived to a ripe old age - Dart to 95 years - and had mothers who had a big influence on them. Both worked to scientific principles but were ahead of their time and were bugged by the fixed thinking of their peers. Both championed the individual and were inspirational teachers. They were both interested in human movement, and to each the head was very important.
I hope I have whetted your appetite enough to get this book, and I let Dart himself ‘ have the last word, one with which I think FM would concur.
“To cease achieving skill by well-directed work during life is to die in that respect, just as surely as partial or incomplete death results from cessation of ultra-uterine activities. Life is movement!”
© Jean Clark. Reproduced with permission.
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This edition © Mouritz 2005. All rights reserved. |