Chapter 4

The Synthesis and

Handy Man

If I had to opt for one single year as the most momen

tous in the twentieth-century intellectual history of paleoanthropology, I
would unhesitatingly choose 1950. Theodosius Dobzhansky had, of course,
already put the Synthesis cat among the paleoanthropological pigeons back
in 1944, but it was wartime, and nobody seems to have taken much immediate notice. Nonetheless, Dobzhanskys take on human evolution pointed
to the future, and in many ways the end of World War II, the year after his
article appeared, also marked the passing of the old guard in paleoanthropology. In 1948 the aged though still-industrious Arthur Keith published
a volume entitled A New Theory of Human Evolution, but the book actually did little to deliver on its title. It is mostly remembered, if at all, for its
vaguely anti-Semitic stance. The time had come for a new cast of characters
to step onto the paleoanthropological stage.
A leader among the new generation of biological anthropologists was
Sherwood Washburn. Rather conventionally trained at Harvard during the
1930s, Washburn enthusiastically embraced the New Evolutionary Synthesis after joining Dobzhansky on the Columbia faculty in 1940. And it
was with this energetic convert that the Synthesis at last acquired a conduit
into paleoanthropology. In 1950 Washburn (by then at the University of

978-1-137-27889-0_Tattersall.indb 69

4/20/15 3:25 PM

70

The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack

Chicago) and Dobzhansky jointly organized a conference hosted by Long

Islands Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Grandly titled The Origin and
Evolution of Man, this international meeting brought together numerous luminaries of paleoanthropology and adjacent sciences, including all
three of the giants of the Synthesis. It was thus loaded with star power, but
in retrospect, one contribution stands out not only as the most newsworthy presentation at the conference, but also as one of the most influential
benchmarks ever in paleoanthropology. Significantly, it was not made by a
paleoanthropologist. It was made by the ornithologist Ernst Mayr.
As forceful on the printed page as in oratoryalthough his published
version bears all the marks of haste in preparationMayr didnt bother to
mince his words. In no uncertain terms, he informed the assembled multitude that the picture of complexity in human evolution implied by all those
hominid species and genera was just plain wrong. To begin with, he declared, both the theoretical and the morphological yardsticks by which the
anatomists had differentiated them were entirely inappropriate. For example, if you took a couple of fruit fly species and blew them up to human size,
they would look much more different from one another than the members
of any pair of living primate species do. And the same went in spades for
fossil hominids.
Spectacularly irrelevant as the metaphor was, it resonated with an audience that was uncomfortably aware of the thin theoretical ice on which
it skated. And it primed that audience for Mayrs more specific claim, that
the supposed diversity of hominid genera and species just didnt exist. What
was more, Mayr continued, even in principle there was no way in which that
diversity could have existed, because the possession of material culture so
remarkably broadened the ecological niche of tool-wielding hominids that
there would never have been enough ecological space in the world for more
than one human species at a time.
Put together, Mayr said, these various practical and theoretical considerations dictated that every one of the human fossils known should be placed
within a single evolving polytypic lineage. And not only was there a mere
three species recognizable within that lineage, but every one of those species belonged to a single genus: Homo. As Mayr saw it, Homo transvaalensis
(the australopiths) had given rise to H. erectus (including Pithecanthropus,
Sinanthropus, and so forth), which in turn evolved into H. sapiens (including the Neanderthals). And that was it.

978-1-137-27889-0_Tattersall.indb 70

4/20/15 3:25 PM

The

Synthesis and Handy Man

71

Stillas if he somehow felt that things couldnt have been quite this
simpleMayr inquired explicitly why, unlike virtually any other successful mammal family, Hominidae had not thrown off a whole array of species.
What, he asked, is the cause of this puzzling trait of the hominid stock to
stop speciating in spite of its eminent evolutionary success? His ingenious
answer to this excellent question brought him right back to mans great
ecological diversity. Humans, Mayr declared, had specialized in despecialization. What was more, Man occupies more ecological niches than
any known animal. If the single species man occupies all the niches that
are open for a Homo-like creature, it is obvious that he cannot speciate
(emphasis mine). Mayr also noted something else very special about man,
something that, in his view at least, supported his reconstruction of human
phylogeny as an infinite recession of todays ubiquitous Homo sapiens back
into the past: Man is apparently particularly intolerant of competitors...
the elimination of Neanderthal man by the invading Cro-Magnon man is
only one example.
Mayr took questions at the end of his presentation. When asked (not
by a paleoanthropologist, of course) about how the notable morphological
differences found among fossil hominids could all be compressed into a
single genus, he finessed his answer by responding that since there are no
absolute generic characters, it is impossible to define and delimit genera
on a purely morphological basis. Nobody at the time saw fit to call him
on this. Nobody pointed out the obvious: that morphology was the only
thing that paleontologists had to work with, and that, while he might technically have been right about the nonexistence of absolute generic characterswhatever exactly that meantfossil genera had to be recognized
from their morphology. Nor did anybody suggest that intolerance of competition might be specifically a feature of Homo sapiens, distinguishing it
from even its closest relatives. And neither did anyone question any other of
Mayrs sweeping and hugely speculative declarationseither at the time, or
in the couple of years following the appearance in print of his provocative
comments.
Almost certainly, the reason for this supine acceptance of his many-sided
criticisms of their field is that Mayrs broadside had shocked the tiny elite of
paleoanthropologists into some long-overdue introspection. They finally began to realize that they and their predecessors had been operating in a theoretical vacuum, in which nobodyexcept perhaps Franz Weidenreichhad

978-1-137-27889-0_Tattersall.indb 71

4/20/15 3:25 PM

72

The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack

bothered to think much either about the processes that might have underwritten the stories they were telling about their fossils, or about how their
operating assumptions fit in with what was known about how the rest of
Nature had evolved. And here was Mayr, the self-assured architect of the
Synthesis, with an eloquent and comprehensive analysis of their science: an
analysis that combined a nod to morphology with considerations of evolutionary process, systematics, speciation theory, and ecologyall those key
factors that paleoanthropologists were now beginning to feel guilty about
having largely ignoredto produce a cogent and coherent statement about
human evolution. Without an intellectual fallback position, what could they
do but capitulate? Caught in this uncomfortable epistemological situation,
hardly anybody seemed to mind that Mayrs scenario was far from firmly
anchored in the study of the fossils themselves.
The major English-speaking exception to this instant surrender was
Robert Brooms younger associate John Robinson, who pointed out at some
length that the morphological heterogeneity among the gracile and robust
australopithsand some similarities he saw between some South African
and early Javan materialindicated at least two coexisting hominid lineages in the Pliocene or early Pleistocene. And although Mayrs grudging
admission that Robinson indeed had a valid point was buried in a pile of
notes published in a journal that paleoanthropologists didnt read, once
Robinson had pointed this out most of his colleagues came to agree that
the robust australopiths were best excluded from Mayrs linear scheme. The
genus name Australopithecus continued to be used for all the gracile australopiths (and for some paleoanthropologists, mainly Robinson, the robust offshoot continued to be called Paranthropus). Robinson himself also
continued to use the name Telanthropus (his quotes) for the mysterious,
very lightly built hominid fossils from Swartkransand by then also from
one section of Sterkfontein, which by the mid-1950s also had begun to produce some crudely flaked stone tools.
But that was about it. After that fateful year of 1950, paleoanthropologists in the English-speaking world dutifully lined up behind Mayrs contention that, after the australopith stage (and probably well back into it),
hominid evolution had to all intents and purposes consisted of the progressive modification of a single central lineage. At any one point in time
that lineage had consisted of multiple geographical variants, but the whole
thing was consistently knit together by genetic interchange. Throughout,

978-1-137-27889-0_Tattersall.indb 72

4/20/15 3:25 PM