South Africa
In South Africa the first "Handy Man" or earliest tool maker was discovered. Raymond Dart, an Australian anatomist and anthropologist, discovered a six year old skeleton in Taung (Northern city of South Africa) that dated back about two million years ago. The Taung child was refered to as the earliest tool maker and "Handy Man" because of his gazelle long bones used as tools for survival and basic needs. At first, the scientific community thought Dart jumped the gun with his report in Nature and that he was too excited to make conclusions with such little evidence. The skull of the Taung child was 450 centimeters cubed and for the fossil to be considered in a direct line of human ancestry, the size of the skull would have to be at least 800 centimeters cubed. The lack of volume of the Taung child's skull left Dart and the scientific world with false hope even though the findings had a spinal cord at the base of the skull that suggested he walked upright. Then, a man named Robert Broom came along...
Robert Broom, a Scottish doctor and paleontologist, found remains of an adult version of the Taung child in Sterkfontein, South Africa named Plesianthropus transvaalensis. This proved that the "Handy Man" wasn't merely an ape or chimp and that he was an important transition to human ancestry that came out of Africa. |