The Man who Found the Missing Link: The extraordinary life of Eugene Dubois
by Pat Shipman, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 拢25, ISBN 0297842900
IN 1893, Eugene Dubois announced that he had found the 鈥渕issing link鈥� near
Trinil on the island of Java. These fossil remains were, he said, from a species
intermediate between humans and (other) great apes. They would, he hoped,
confirm Charles Darwin鈥檚 description of the origin of species, and ours in
particular.
Pat Shipman鈥檚 account of Dubois鈥檚 life makes a fascinating story and is
particularly strong on the science. It is also replete with engaging detail
about how digs in the East Indies and India were organised. Expedition kit
ranged from elephants to boot-polish, and the problems included managing the
corv茅e鈥攗npaid communal labour controlled by feudal
lords鈥攁nd convict labour.
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Dubois was a Dutch anatomist who threw up a university position to seek the
missing link, which he confidently predicted would be found in the Netherlands
East Indies (now Indonesia). His find at Trinil consisted of an ape-like
skullcap, a human-like femur and a tooth. His triumph must have seemed
complete.
So Dubois was shocked and embittered when his interpretation of
Pithecanthropus erectus as an ape-human intermediate met with resistance.
But he should not have been surprised. He had not excavated the finds himself,
and they came from a layer of scattered and disarticulated bones鈥攕o were
they from the same individual, or even the same species?
Dubois returned to Holland and an undistinguished position as an assistant
professor. He alienated the scientific community by restricting access to his
specimens until he had properly described them鈥攚hich he then proceeded to
delay鈥攁nd he refused to respect alternative interpretations of his find.
He does seem to have had a paranoid streak, which not only wrecked his
scientific relationships but also his dearest friendship, with a Scots planter
whom he accused of adultery with his wife Anna while he was away collecting.
Shipman is an anthropologist who has won prizes for her popular science
writing, especially her book Taking Wing on theories of the origin of
birds. The Man who Found the Missing Link is, however, itself a kind of
missing link. It looks like a scholarly history, with all the apparatus of
substantial bibliography and notes, direct quotations from contemporary papers
and letters, interesting photos (sometimes badly reproduced and cropped), a
glossary and useful maps. Yet it reads like a historical novel, or perhaps a
drama-documentary.
I love biography, and I adore historical novels. I just don鈥檛 like them
mixed. The storytelling imperative means Shipman must ignore gaps and
ambiguities in the evidence, and it forces her to pick a line, where the
historian would stay sitting on the fence and take a more explicitly objective
view.
The story is perfectly plausible. But how much of it is interpolation of what
seems 鈥渙bvious鈥� to us today? How much of the personal detail is inserted in the
鈥渕ust have felt鈥� storytelling vein, and how much is genuine but
under-referenced鈥攇iven that Dubois鈥檚 papers were censored after his death?
For instance, in a long passage about Anna鈥檚 miscarriage, and its disastrous
emotional consequences, we are told that the 鈥渙nly documentation鈥� is Dubois鈥檚
diary entry 鈥淎nna abortus鈥�.
Shipman鈥檚 final assessment of Dubois is short, sharp and interesting. She
does not go into detail on the modern assessment of the Trinil finds, but then
it is refreshing to be given Dubois鈥檚 story in purely contemporary terms,
without modern hindsight. While I am unconvinced by the detail she gives of his
personal life, on the evidence presented here, many will find this a good read.
As the sole biography of Dubois it will at least be of value to those who are
fascinated by human evolution.