Every new discovery is a revelation that re-ignites one’s sense of wonderment.
Professor Phillip Tobias, who passed away on the 7th of June 2012 was a great master of science, and a remarkable South African. He has been honoured with the title Professor Emeritus and carried 16 honorary degrees and countless awards and medals. He is acknowledged worldwide as an expert in various fields: anatomy, human biology and palaeoanthropology. He will always be regarded as a world authority on the evolution of mankind, having excavated and studied hundreds of fossils dating to the early stages of hominid evolution.
One could write volumes on the life of Phillip Tobias (as several have done) and he reflects on his life with humour and insight. Over half a century ago, he embarked on a quest for truth through science: the study of man. His insight and expertise are cast against a timeline that stretches over three million years – exploring genetics, anatomy and medicine in the study of living and prehistoric man. Even though he had retired, Phillip continued to contribute to science as students tapped into his fountain of knowledge and his love for storytelling.
As a young academic, he openly challenged the apartheid regime. In 1948, as the Nationalist Government came to power, he published a book titled The Meaning of Race, which claimed that there was no scientific basis for racial discrimination. He became president of the National Union of South African Students, a vigorous non-racial and anti-apartheid body at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and affiliated universities throughout South Africa
Photo: Pep Bonet
Phillip thrived in the world of academia. To him, it symbolised freedom of expression and learning, and when the apartheid government started to dictate who should be appointed as lecturers and which students were and were not permitted to attend university, he saw this as an onslaught against academic freedom.
Of his own life, Phillip spoke of the ‘Fantastic 50s’ – a decade in which his career soared, he got his medical degree and his PhD in Genetics, he studied abroad, and soon after his return, was offered the position of Head of the Anatomy Department at Wits. It was also the decade in which he shifted his major attention from genetics and the study of living man, to the study of ancestral man and evolution.
He spoke of his life as being a series of serendipitous occurrences. One such moment was when he was presented with the fossil called ‘Dear Boy’ found by Mary and Louis Leakey in the late 1950s and was asked to present the well-preserved discovery to the world. This not only marked a shift in his own life, but the discovery was to set the course for some of the world’s greatest fossil discoveries and understanding of the evolution of mankind.
It also led to Phillip re-opening the excavation of the Sterkfontein Caves in 1965, work that continues to the present. By the 1990s, it had proved to be the world’s richest site for ape-man remains, where some 600 specimens of hominids, together with over 100 000 fossils of other animals were discovered.
This coincided with the inauguration of the first democratic government of South Africa, and when Nelson Mandela’s government came into being in 1994, one of the first things he did was to apply for re-admission ofSouth Africa to UNESCO.
Phillip soon realised that he had opened a treasure chest of artefacts and heritage, and that the SterkfonteinCaves and the surrounding excavation sites should be listed as a World Heritage Site. Through much perseverance and paperwork, he and his team submitted the Sterkfontein Caves to the Council of UNESCO, and on 1 December 1999 their nomination was unanimously accepted, and nicknamed ‘The Cradle of Humankind’.
Phillip has spent his life studying the past, but how does he explain what seems to be an adaptation plateau that mankind has reached, with very little changes over the past thousand years? He believed that natural selection stops selecting when conditions of the climate are static. However, current discussions on climate change may very well challenge the existence of certain populations. He gave the example of island dwellers whose land and population may disappear. Set against the evolutionary timeline, when those islands one day reappear, you may find mankind reoccupying the island and digging up previous fossils of earlier civilisations.
For all his life, Phillip has been in search of synthesis – in search of truth. He believes he shared with all faiths across all continents, with all scientists across science, a reverence for truth. He spoke of every new discovery as a revelation, one that re-ignites the sense of wonderment. His quest for truth is not complete, and may never be, as there are still many gaps in the story, but each new discovery brings an unexpected perspective on this ever-evolving journey of mankind.
Questions from the author to Prof. Tobias
Who is your most remarkable South African?
My most memorable and remarkable personality I must rate as Professor Raymond Arthur Dart, who came here as a young man to take the Chair of the Anatomy Department in 1923, in which I followed him 36 years later. Professor Dart was most remarkable, not so much for the brilliance of his scientific work, but for his visionary and inspirational qualities.
Why is discovery important to the truth?Although there are many ways of seeking truth - some through religious insights, some through philosophic insights, poetry and the insights of the poets, and some through scientific paradigms - they all venerate the truth. If we would seek to find reconciliation between science and religion, between evolution and theology, maybe it is along these lines that one should pursue the quest.
Whether it be pollution, excessive urbanisation, whether it be crime as a kind of urban pathology, if we have had the wit to create the problems, to create the circumstances in which the problems came into being, I think we have the wit to devise solutions. I think we shall survive. I am not one of those little men that run from conference to conference merrily prophesying doom.
Universities had cherished their freedom to appoint whom they wished, to accept as students whom they wished, to teach what they wished. Apartheid was then not only a monumental racist system, which was besetting our country, and lasted for over 40 years, but also it was an onslaught on academic freedom.
There are many gaps in the story that we haven’t filled. Each discovery gives us a new revelation which we hadn’t expected – the whole point of discovery is that you don’t expect it – it is handed to you.
What is your South African message to the world?I would say to all those who have come from beyond our shores, welcome home!
Copies of the book "Remarkable South Africans" by Line Hadsbjerg are available via SA - the Good News.
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