Dawn of Man

August 6 & 7, 2000

• Review by Michael Alan Park
• Response by Eugenie Scott

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This mini-series, in four one-hour episodes, was up to date (including, for example, a South African fossil find made less than two years ago), included onscreen interviews with recognized authorities in the field, and did a fairly reasonable job in presenting recent data in and interpretations of some of the more important facets of the study of human evolution. As an introduction to the topic for a general audience, I've seen worse. I had, however, three issues with the series.

For one thing, although I'm no media critic, some of the production values seemed poor. While there was some nice cinematography of both fossils and site locations, many of these were repeated to an irritating degree, as were some overly dramatic, sepia-toned, blurred focus shots of chimpanzees or staged early hominid scenes. Quite frankly, although this is my field and passion, I became quickly bored.

Second, the series suffered from a problem common to many if not most television treatments of scientific topics. Probably for dramatic purposes, the story of the science of human evolution was presented as just that—a linear narrative: First this was discovered; then this surprising discovery changed everything; then the science of human evolution was 'turned upside down' [the phrase was used more than once] by a new find…and so on. One could easily get the impression that over the last century hominid fossils had been found in the very order that their living forms had existed. As I'm well aware, it can be difficult to tell the story of human evolution along with the story of the science of human evolution without one's audience confusing the chronologies, but when those chronologies are paralleled in this fashion it also can reinforce the general misconception of human evolution as a nice sequential ladder of progress culminating in modern humans, if not actually leading to us all along.

Finally, and to me most importantly, the show was presented entirely from the viewpoint of those authorities who feel they can define modern humans as a species and that modern humans, by that definition, are a recent (about 150,000 year-old) species and one that is separate from all other hominid groups such as the Neandertals. The show consistently took an 'us/them' approach, clearly using the term human to mean only modern humans, with the obvious implication for other populations. Some of the arguments in support of this approach seemed almost desperate. For example, art was listed as an important criterion for modernity. But on the subject of ornamental artifacts associated with Neandertals, the narrator (actor Richard Dreyfuss) said that the Neandertals just 'copied what they saw but didn't realize their importance.' Anthropologist Paul Mellars then claimed it would be 'an extraordinary coincidence if they [Neandertals] invented [ornamental art] independently for themselves.' Why? Because it was already decided that Neandertals were not 'human,' that is, were not Homo sapiens. Art indicates modernity only if the artists are modern. A great example of circular reasoning.

Moreover, the emergence of all these different species of hominids, especially that of modern Homo sapiens some 150,000 years ago, was presented as a given but never accounted for. According to the show, we sort of popped up along the southern African coast (the crashing breakers there shown over and over again). How this speciation event took place was never mentioned. The evolution of new species is common -- on the scale of all the earth's living forms -- but involves a very particular set of circumstances for each instance. Although a technical topic, a discussion of just how, and if, those circumstances apply to the later hominids is too important to be ignored.

The above, of course, is part of the ongoing debate over modern human origins, essentially a question of whether Homo sapiens is a recent separate species (the approach of Dawn of Man) or a much older species that includes the Neandertals and other 'premodern' populations -- the Recent African Origin or Replacement Model versus the Multiregional Evolution Model, in the jargon of anthropology. The latter model, which has, I believe, an increasing following among professionals, was never mentioned; neither was any evidence for that model or alternative interpretations of evidence that was covered. With one telling exception: At the very end of the show—held as a climactic revelation for maximum drama—possible interbreeding between moderns and Neandertals was acknowledged. But if these two populations could interbreed they could not be separate species. The very model of human evolution that was the basis of the show was undermined in the last five minutes by acceptance of some new, and still debatable, evidence.

In the end, then, although this series could certainly generate some excitement about this exciting topic, and although there was little that was technically incorrect, it failed to do justice to what we do know about the processes and nature of biological evolution, about their application to humans, and about the ongoing process of scientific inquiry and debate that is at the heart of modern paleoanthropology and archaeology. Unless one is prepared to discuss it point by point, I can't really recommend Dawn of Man for educational purposes.

Response

Michael and I usually agree on most things, and we agree on a lot of his review, following. But I saw more positive things in it: I saw, for example, an emphasis on "how we know" that usually is not presented in popular science presentations. They showed, for example, that the reason why the Arcy sur Cure cranial fragment -- otherwise unremarkable -- was classed as a Neanderthal was because a scientist did an MRI of it, and because of greater middle ear similarities with neands., it was reclassified. There were actually lots of thigns of that nature, which I feel should be encouraged.

I also rolled my eyes when blurry chimps were used as stand ins for Australopithecines, but the Neanderthal makeup was pretty good! I also thought it was neat that they showed the invading H.s. as dark skinned, which they likely were.

But the biggest complaint I have is against The Learning Channel, which simultaneously with the presentation of this BBC production -- scientifically accurate, as Michael points out -- was to present on the discovery/TLC web page our very own Krishna Creationist Michael Cremo as the "scientific expert". The whole nature of the Cremo appearance was to devalue the scientific validity of the BBC program; the tenor of the web page was "ask the questions scientists don't want you to ask" , the concealing of important evidence by scientists just chasing a research buck, etc. The public is being lied to, but Cremo will tell you the truth!

I think anyone with a little time should contact TLC and ask them why they bothered sponsoring the BBC production if their intent was to totally undermine it with this pseudoscience.

Check it out:

http://tlc.discovery.com/tlcpages/dawn/dawn.html

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