14: Episode 14: African Halloween - A Spider Staff and a Significant Skull

The Past and Stuff

In this episode Ashley’s traditionally disturbing Stuff in the News concerns the billion-dollar international trade in monkey skulls and other bits of dead animals you can buy on ebay. Tracey’s traditionally earnest Stuff in the News focuses on a paradigm changing archaeological find from Africa - a nearly half-a-million-year-old, pre-homo sapien, wooden structure that has been unearthed in Zambia. Sticking with African artifacts, Ashley’s Piece of Stuff this week is a linguist’s staff of office from Ghana that prominently features a large spider - the trickster Anansi. Tracey, meanwhile, continues her story of the Piltdown Man Hoax by interweaving the story of the discovery of a real skull from Africa, that of the Taung Child. While this was one of the most significant archaeological and scientific discoveries of the twentieth century, and could potentially have challenged a lot of scientific racism, it was dismissed for decades because of the Piltdown Hoax.
Ashley’s Stuff in the News:
“Nearly 400 Monkey Skulls Seized at Paris Airport, Destined for US,” Al Jazeera, September 22, 2023, https://www.a
ljazeera.com/news/2023/9/22/french-customs-seize-nearly-400-monkey-skulls-destined-for-the-us.
Tracey’s Stuff in the News:
L. Barham, et al, “Evidence for the earliest structural use of wood at least 476,000 years ago,” Nature, September 20, 2023. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06557-9
Margaret Davis, “World’s Oldest Wooden Structures Dating Back Up To 476,000 Years found in Zambia, Discovery Could Rewrite Human History,” Science Times, September 20, 2023. https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/46096/20230920/worlds-oldest-wooden-structures-dating-back-up-476-000-years.htm
Katie Hunt, “Extraordinary structure has no real parallel in the archaeological record, scientists say,” CNN, September 21, 2023. https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/20/africa/oldest-wooden-structure-zambia-scn/index.html
Ian Sample, “Oldest wooden structure discovered on the border of Zambia and Tanzania,” The Guardian, September 20, 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/sep/20/oldest-wooden-structure-discovered-on-border-of-zambia-and-tanzania
Victoria Allen, “Wood you believe it? World’s Oldest Wooden Structure is discovered in Zambia, dating back 476,000 years,” Daily Mail, September 20, 2023. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-12540687/Wood-believe-Worlds-oldest-wooden-structure-discovered-Zambia-dating-476-000-years.html
Ashley’s Piece of Stuff:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Staff of Office: Figures, Spider Web and Spider Motif (ȯkyeame).” https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/314925.
Molefi Kete Asante. “Ananse.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Last modified September 19, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ananse.
“Akan.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Last modified September 14, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Akan.
Tracey’s Piece of Stuff:
C. K. Brain "Raymond Dart and our African origins," in A Century of Nature: Twenty-One Discoveries that Changed Science and the World, edited by Laura Garwin and Tim Lincoln, https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/284158_brain.html
Eric Wayman, How Africa Became the Cradle of Humankind,” Smithsonain Magazine, October 17, 2011. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-africa-became-the-cradle-of-humankind-108875040/
For sources on Piltdown Hoax please see show notes for episode 13.
Music credit Ashley Bozian. Image credit Tracey Cooper.