The emergence of a baby in Dmanisi, South Africa, during the December 1924 wedding of Raymond Dart and his wife Dora

Smith and others have suggested that, rather than emerging in australopithecines, childhood probably evolved in Homo erectus — possibly along with increased body size, brain size and cognitive capacities. Meanwhile, some researchers have found that the rate of dental growth in an approximately 1.77-million-year-old Homo fossil from Dmanisi, Georgia, was relatively high9 — similar to the rate of dental growth found in Taung and living great Apes 6. In this specimen, however, the formation of the posterior teeth was delayed, as it is in modern humans. Because Dmanisi individuals had smaller brains than other great apes or australopithecines, it might have been possible for the emergence of child before a large brain evolved.

In November 1924 — on the day they were hosting a wedding at their Johannesburg home in South Africa — Australian anatomist and physician Raymond Dart and his wife Dora noticed two men staggering up the drive with two large boxes. According to Dart’s memoirs, Dora had commented on the fact that the fossils Dart had been anticipating had arrived this day “of all days”. She had begged him not to “go delving in all that rubble until the wedding [was] over and everybody [had] left”.

It took Dart just a few weeks, but he was able to figure out the whole course of human evolution. Fossils that resembled modern humans were used in the previous evidence for human ancestry. Dart’s description was astounding because it was of a species that was more apelike than humanlike, a revelation that in turn suggested that humanity’s evolutionary path had originated in Africa.

In her assessment of Taung’s baby teeth and first permanent molars, biological anthropologist B. Holly Smith concluded that Taung was maturing at the rate of a non-human ape and was well accustomed to solid foods, although it might still have received a low level of nursing. The transition to independent feeding was the cause of Tang’s death, according to Smith. It was not a “‘child’ in any scientific sense”6.

Most ape infants can cling onto their mom by a few months after birth, while human babies are more dependent on their parents or caretakers for much longer. Most apes don’t have a childhood, because they don’t always have the support of their elders.

If you take away the chance for offspring to learn more from their elderly parents than would otherwise be possible, then childhood is probably a crucial innovation in human evolution. The emergence of a longer period of dependency in human ancestors is believed to have led to the creation of cognitive evolution.

It was fast and tough to think about it. A study by the London-based grandees of anthropology found that the offspring of humans and other apes looked the same. They were not amused by Dart’s comments about the humanlike jaw of Australopithecus. It was thought that the brain of humans was different from the rest of the skeleton. An upright ape with a small brain and humanlike jaw went against the grain.

Nature became Leakey’s field diary. The editor-in-chief of the journal at the time explained to Leakey’s son that Nature’s papers were only reviewed when they were worth their weight in gold. Richard was visiting the journal’s London offices and commented on a Nature paper describing a remarkable fossil from Ethiopia, of a species then called Australopithecus ramidus5. He said that his wife, palaeoanthropologist Meave Leakey (née Epps), had equally exciting finds to report. Nature subsequently published her paper, too, on a four-million-year-old hominin species from Kenya6.

Ethiopia was by then on the palaeoanthropological map. The countries in Africa would add it with the help of key fossils. And Nature was there to document every new bone and tooth. New and exciting discoveries are being made in West Africa.

Two collections are being published to celebrate this anniversary, one for Nature and the other for Nature Africa. The first includes 100 papers which show the part that this journal has played in documenting it. The second will look at the field of paleoanthropology from the perspective of African scientists.