Lucy's upcoming Prague visit brings memories of controversy
Scientists resisted the last U.S. tour of the famous fossil. I look into the reasons why some researchers still oppose public exhibit of human relatives.
Earlier this year the National Museum of Czechia announced a collaboration with the National Museum of Ethiopia and Ethiopian Ministry of Tourism to bring key fossils of Australopithecus afarensis for public exhibition in Europe for the first time. The “Lucy” skeleton will be part of the exhibition as well as the “Selam”skeleton of a young child of the species from the Dikika field region. The exhibition is scheduled to open in August of this year and run for around 60 days.
“I am delighted that during my visit to Ethiopia in the autumn of 2023 we managed to arrange for the Lucy and Selam fossils to be exhibited in Prague. This is a truly unique event, as the original fossil will be on public display in Europe for the first time ever.”—Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala
According to the release, the Czech National Museum will be contributing to the “modernization and development of museums in Ethiopia” as part of the arrangements for the exhibition.
I think this is wonderful news! Very exciting to see this engagement with African heritage and human origins.
But there are scientists who disagree. Everyone loves seeing dinosaurs, naturally. When it comes to human relatives, some researchers have a different perspective. For the past forty years or more there has been a strong current of resistance to the public exhibition of fossils related to human heritage.
Can researchers still be so short-sighted and self-defeating? I have a lot of hope that this resistance is a thing of the past.
A history of controversy
When I read the news of this new upcoming museum exhibition, I went back to stories from the last time the Lucy skeleton went on tour. In 2006, the Houston Museum of Natural Science announced an agreement to bring the Lucy skeleton to the U.S., together with a selection of significant cultural objects chosen to tell the story of Ethiopia's history from deep time to the present. The Ethiopian authorities planned for a six-year tour visiting as many as 11 cities, titled “Lucy's Legacy”.
But once announced, the tour quickly attracted criticism and protest from scientists. Some objected that fossil human relatives should never travel for public exhibitions. Some expressed a general concern for the safety of the fossils, recognizing that travel and public display might pose risks of loss or damage to the remains.
Others expressed a concern for the future support of scientific visitation to African nations. They worried that scientists would never travel to countries in Africa to study fossils if instead the fossils themselves traveled to the U.S. and Europe. If scientists could study them without traveling, museums and institutions would lose out on fees and other supports provided by scientific visitors.
Less widely voiced—but no less important—was an underlying concern about financial arrangements. Who would profit from the exhibition?
At the time of the “Lucy's Legacy” announcement, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago had entered talks with the National Museums of Kenya to bring the “Turkana Boy” skeleton and other fossils to the U.S. for a public exhibition. This idea also became subject to protests and was ultimately dropped.
Scientists who opposed the exhibition of the Lucy skeleton and the Nariokotome skeleton were not shy about talking to the press. One repeated theme was that fossils should not be moved without “compelling scientific purposes”. Some researchers mentioned a little-known statement from an organization known as the International Association for the Study of Human Paleontology. This organization kicked off at a scientific congress in Nice, France, in 1982 with Henry de Lumley as a key organizer. At a meeting in 1998 at Sun City, South Africa, the members resolved that public displays should only include replicas, never original fossils. The statement asserted that fossils “should not be transported beyond the country of origin unless there are compelling scientific reasons”.
This statement represented a hardening of attitudes that had simmered for years. The previous decade had seen the largest public exhibition of hominin fossils ever mounted at the American Museum of Natural History, titled Ancestors: Four Million Years of Humanity. That event included forty important hominin fossils from thirteen nations, seen by a half-million visitors. Still, the Ancestors exhibition had provoked controversy. The exhibition’s inclusion of South African fossils and advertising during the anti-apartheid movement of the mid-1980s nearly derailed it. In the lead-up to the 1984 opening, some prominent scientists spoke out against moving fossils for public exhibition, focusing mostly on the risk—however slight—that damage to irreplaceable heritage might result.
The “Lucy’s legacy” tour would not be halted by the scientific protests. But those protests did reduce the public appeal, and other institutions took note. Sadly, with the controversy many people—remarkably not only creationists but also some scientists—seemed to revel when the fossil tour had trouble finding other institutions to participate, and drew smaller-than-expected public attendance.
Ultimately “Lucy’s Legacy” appeared for limited times in Houston, Seattle, New York, and Santa Ana, with the return to Ethiopia in 2013. Although the Ethiopian government reportedly tried to create interest for the tour in Shanghai, this did not happen.
Science magazine described the tour as a “fizzle”.
A resistance to repatriation
I had trouble in 2006 understanding what was going on with the opposition to public exhibit and travel of fossils. I don't think I was alone. Looking back, it's weird. For a variety of reasons, many scientists for the first decade or more of this century were strongly opposed to letting the public see original fossils, either in traveling exhibitions or in their countries of origin.
Here’s a relevant fact: In the U.S., U.K., France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Russia, Kenya, and South Africa, are hundreds of hominin fossils that were taken from their countries of origin during colonial times, still held by universities, natural history museums, and other institutions.
The phrase “compelling scientific reasons” was not an accidental choice of words. Today when I look back at the signers of the 1998 “no public display” resolution, I recognize many of those signers as representatives of institutions that are still resisting repatriation of fossil material. These institutions have long leaned upon the argument that the home countries lack resources and facilities to provide scientific curation for their own fossils. According to this argument, repatriation risks the future loss of scientific work. Hence, opponents of repatriation often say there are “compelling scientific reasons” for the fossils to remain where they are, within the walls of European or U.S. museums or universities.
The “compelling scientific reasons” resolution was signed 27 years ago. Since then there has been little progress on repatriation of fossil hominins to their countries of origin. A notable exception was the Olduvai Gorge material that was repatriated from Kenya to Tanzania after strong investment in facilities by the National Museum and House of Culture in Dar es Salaam. But from Europe and the U.S., hardly anything has changed.
That lack of motion on fossil hominin heritage is a big contrast when compared with the remains of humans who lived in historic times. Skeletons and skulls of many people around the world were traded, purchased, and stolen by institutions in Europe and North America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Over the last few decades there has been valuable progress in the return of such skeletal remains and other biological materials taken during colonial times.
Why should fossil hominins be different? That’s a complicated issue. I think the reasons for repatriation are much the same. In my opinion it is important to recognize that the countries of origin for such fossils have a special connection to the heritage within their borders. But my opinion is not shared by every scientist.
Some rightly observe that most fossil hominins are so distant from living people that they are equally related to all of us around the world. Many of them consider fossil hominins as world heritage, and consider major world museums as the best places for their long-term curation and study.
Others are a greater problem because they prefer to control the future scientific work on fossils. They see the role of institutions as expanding research and reaping the benefits. There is a counter-intuitive relationship among open access, exhibition of fossils, and repatriation. When fossils reside in their countries of origin, both exhibition of the fossils and open access to data from them benefits the home country, it benefits the global public. But openness does not tend to channel benefits to a favored few.
The quest for control of the scientific work can take place no matter where the fossils reside. In my view, it’s the notion of exclusive control; the notion that only certain special people can do “good science” that is the real root of resistance to broader sharing with the public.
The importance of openness
I applaud Ethiopia for sharing its fossil heritage with the world. I’m hopeful that there will be greater access to the data from these fossils for scientific work. There are so many people inspired by the Lucy fossil, and for the Dikika child to be more widely recognized will be wonderful.
Sixteen years ago “Lucy's Legacy” visited New York, where an exhibition space near Times Square was opened for the exhibit. One of my readers at the time sent me an update describing their visit.
“When we finally got to Lucy, she was lying in a case and I have to admit, I got a little teary. I mean, there she was, right in front of me…. I spent a lot of time looking at her, and it is amazing how complete she is. The security guard got to talking with us and he says the exhibit has been a big flop. I felt like shouting to all the people outside looking at the lights and the cars and marquees, telling them what they're missing.”
That passage has really stuck with me.
I have over the years learned a lot about what it takes to organize and create a successful exhibition of hominin fossils to the public. I’ve been involved in designing or consulting on public exhibitions in the U.S. and in South Africa, some including original fossils. I have been so impressed by all the creative work, design, and logistics that supported the public exhibitions that I’ve been involved with. To think of all that work, undercut by scientific naysayers, is heartbreaking to me.
So it’s been fun for me to read about some of the impressive arrangements that the Czech National Museum has made for the upcoming visit of Ethiopian fossils. The setup sounds like a lot of thought has gone into connecting people with these ancestor individuals.
The National Museum's new permanent exhibition, People, will be among the world’s most significant exhibitions dedicated to humanity. It will provide the most comprehensive presentation of anthropology, prehistory, and material culture in the Czech Republic. The closely interlinked sections Man and His Ancestors and The Story of Prehistoric History will seamlessly integrate anthropological, archaeological, and cultural perspectives. The hyper-realistic models, including a lifelike reconstruction of Lucy, crafted specifically for the National Museum by renowned French sculptor Élisabeth Daynès—whose works can be admired in museums worldwide—are expected to be a major attraction for visitors.
I hope I have a chance to see this exhibition, either in Prague or in some future venue!
Notes: The International Association for the Study of Human Paleontology, or Association Internationale de Paleontologie Humaine, was founded in 1982 as an affiliate of the Union International des Sciences Préhistoriques et Protohistoriques (UISPP). This association organized a handful of international meetings, with the last being the 1998 dual congress.
I wrote earlier this year at length about the fascinating history of the Ancestors exhibition: Gathering the Ancestors.
This post has been corrected to indicate that the last visit by the “Lucy’s Legacy” tour was Santa Ana, California.
References
Dalton, R. (2006). Ethiopian plan for Lucy tour splits museums. Nature, 444(7115), 8–8. https://doi.org/10.1038/444008b
Delson, E. (1985). Ancestors, the Hard Evidence: Proceedings of the Symposium Held at the American Museum of Natural History April 6-10, 1984 to Mark the Opening of the Exhibition “Ancestors, Four Million Years of Humanity.” A.R. Liss.
Freedman, S. G. (1984, June 1). Fossil dispute may bring apartheid denunciation. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/01/arts/fossil-dispute-may-bring-apartheid-denunciation.html
Gibbons, A. (2006). Lucy’s Tour Abroad Sparks Protests. Science, 314(5799), 574–575. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.314.5799.574
Gibbons, A. (2007). Nariokotome Boy to Go on the Road Despite Protests. Science, 318(5847), 32–32. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.318.5847.32
International Association for the Study of Human Paleontology. (1999). Resolution regarding the transport of hominid fossils beyond the country of origin. Journal of Human Evolution, 36(4), 459. https://doi.org/10.1006/jhev.1998.0296
Sullivan, W. (1983, June 26). New York will get a convention of fossil skulls of man’s ancestors. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1983/06/26/us/new-york-will-get-a-convention-of-fossil-skulls-of-man-s-ancestors.html
Sullivan, Walter. (1984, April 5). Far-flung fossils gathered for exhibit. New York Times, 1.
Yardley, William. (2009, March 13). They didn’t love Lucy. New York Times.