Returning Zinj: curating human origins in twentieth-century Tanzania

Abstract

The discovery in 1959 of the fossil fragments that would become the Zinjanthropus boisei skull propelled Olduvai Gorge, the Leakey family, and the search for human origins into the glare of the world's media. This triumvirate has remained in the public eye ever since, placing the discovery of “Zinj” at the very heart of our understanding of the archaeologists’ quest to uncover the deep history of human kind. This article traces the biography of the Zinjanthropus boisei skull from its discovery in 1959 to its incarnation in current public discourse in eastern Africa, half a century on. This requires us firstly to resituate the scientific endeavour that brought Zinj to us within its historical context, and then to examine the combination of materiality and iconographic reproduction that has shaped our view of the skull and its story. The experience of the National Museum of Tanzania, in terms of its own wider institutional history and its specific curatorship of Zinj allows historians to critically assess the importance of palaeoanthropology in East Africa in its overlapping local, regional and transnational spheres.

Keywords:

• palaeoanthropology
• Tanzania
• Olduvai Gorge
• Zinjanthropus
• national museum

Notes

1. The term palaeoanthropology refers to the study of ancient humans, as used by the Olduvai Landscape Paleoanthropological Project.

2. Simpson, Making Representations, 228.

3. Clifford, “Objects and Selves,” 244.

4. I work with Ute Röschenthaler's term “object biography” here. Röschenthaler, “Of Objects and Contexts,” 90 and 84.

5. Staniforth, “Becoming Human”; Idem, “Representing the World's Earliest Human”.

6. National Museum Quarterly Report, February 1 to April 30, 1965.

7. Anon., “Quotations from the Annual Report of the Antiquities Division for the Year 1963,” 197. It is thought that Zinj was male, but there are doubts. My use of pronoun is a contingency in order to recreate the sense of this skull representing an (unknowable) individual, as opposed, I hope, to a lazy generalising of “mankind.”

8. Anon., “Quotations from the Annual Report of the Antiquities Division for the Year 1963,” 197.

9. Leakey, “The Astonishing Discovery of ‘Nutcracker Man”’; Idem, By the Evidence: Memoirs: Idem, “Finding theWorld's Earliest Man” Idem, “A New Fossil Skull from Olduvai”; Idem, “The Newly-Discovered Skull from Olduvai”.

10. Annual Report, 1968–1969.

11. Annual Report, 1969–1970. Note the use of Homo at the exposition, when Zinjanthropus had never been scientifically classified as such, and since 1964 had officially been demoted from direct human lineage.

12. In, for example: Cole, Leakey's Luck; Leakey, By the Evidence; Morell Ancestral Passions; and Willis, The Hominid Gang.

13. Gillman, “Report,” 6.

14. Gillman, “Report,” 5.

15. Nicol Smith, “Report Concerning Museum's Start,” 8.

16. Bennett, “Speaking to the Eyes,” 26–7.

17. Whitlamsmith, “Ukumbusho wa Marehemu King George V,” 13.

18. Nicol Smith, “Report Concerning Museum's Start,” 9.

19. Mntambo, “The Founding,” 21 and 22.

20. Anon., “Review of Monthly Exhibition,” 38.

21. Anon., “Museum Picture,” Tanganyika Standard, 39. The Tanganyika Standard had been in production since 1930 and was in the same Nairobi group that produced the fairly vitriolic East African Standard. It reflected the views of the much smaller and less entrenched white population in Tanganyika. Sturmer, Media History, 53–4.

22. Report of the National Museum, July 1, 1963 to June 30, 1964.

23. Anon, “Museum Picture,” Tanganyika Standard, 39.

24. National Museum Report, July–October, 1964.

25. Anon, “Museum Picture,” Tanganyika Standard, 39.

26. Report, July 1956–December 1957.

27. Annual Report, 1942.

28. Report, January–August, 1959.

29. Annual Report, 1954 and 1955.

30. Anon, “Art Exhibition,” 61–2.

31. Anon., “Tanganyika's Museum,” Tanganyika Standard, August 8, 1942.

32. As attested to in Sheets-Pyenson Cathedrals of Science.

33. Morell, Ancestral Passions, 123, fn 2; MacKenzie, Empire of Nature, 39.

34. Morell, Ancestral Passions, 135.

35. Report, July 1956–December 1957.

36. Anon., “Tanganyika's Museum,” Tanganyika Standard, August 8, 1942.

37. Report, January–August, 1959.

38. Report, July 1956–December 1957 and Report, January–August, 1959.

39. Annual Report, for the year ended December 31, 1958.

40. Anon., “Quotations from the Annual Report of the Department of Antiquities for 1959,” 154.

41. Zinjanthropus also featured in several Illustrated London News articles, in The Times, and Nature.

42. Anon., “Quotations from the Annual Report of the Department of Antiquities for 1959,” 154.

43. Museum Report, January 1, 1962 to June 30, 1963.

44. Report, September 1,1959 to December 31, 1961.

45. Cummins, “Caribbean Museums,” 241.

46. The curator Stanley West described the museum's historical development in “The National Museum of Tanganyika,” 163–6.

47. Report, September 1, 1959 to December 31, 1961.

48. Cummins, “Caribbean Museums,” 224–245.

49. Morell, Ancestral Passions, 337 and 296.

50. Annual Report, 1969–1970, and Annual Report, 1972–1973.

51. Annual Report, 1970–1971.

52. Report, July 1, 1963 to June 30, 1964.

53. Annual Report, 1970–1971.

54. Annual Report, 1974–1975 and 1975–1976.

55. Sheriff, “Encapsulating History,” 161–2.

56. These exhibitions perhaps also reflected the ambivalent position Tanzania occupied in the Cold War arena in these years.

57. Mturi, “Protection, Preservation,” 94.

58. Mturi, interview August 1, 2004.

59. Paresso, interview July 18, 2004.

60. Annual Report, 1977–1978, 1978–1979, 1979–1980.

61. Tanzania's withdrawal from the New York “Ancestors” exhibition and seminar in 1984 is often conflated with Richard Leakey's decision to withhold Kenyan specimens because of fossil safety. Fidelis Masao, however, remembers the phone call relaying President Nyerere's decision to boycott the event due to the presence of South African delegates just the day before flying out. Masao interview, September 1, 2004.

62. Magori, “Preface.”

63. Magori, “Preface.” Clarke, “Mary Leakey,” 1.

64. “Reporter's Visit at the National Museum,” Daily News (Tanzania), July 14, 2003.

65. Masao and Blumenschine, “Progress and Prospects,” 3.

66. Masao and Blumenschine, “Progress and Prospects,” 5.

67. Masao, interview September 1, 2004.