Terrible monkeys: Henry Fairfield Osborn, race, and the search for origins of man

When Roy Chapman Andrews traveled to the Gobi Desert of Central Asia in the 1920s, he discovered a huge cache of fossil creatures. He found an entire menagerie of dinosaurs—including the first known dinosaur eggs. His exploits were followed by millions through the heavy media coverage, and he became an internationally known celebrity. The research and museum displays his finds made possible created a mania for dinosaurs that continues to the present. With all the excitement over dinosaurs, however, the original goal of the expeditions was lost. Andrews had gone to Central Asia to search for the origins of man. The trips were an effort to prove the human evolution theory of Andrews' boss at the American Museum of Natural History, Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857–1935). Andrews' mentor believed human evolution was purposeful and had specific direction built upon divinely inspired laws of organic change. He constructed a non-Darwinian theory that human evolution was the long adventurous story of both individuals and groups exerting personal will power and inborn characteristics to struggle for and achieve both biological and spiritual success.; This biography will chart the intellectual development of Osborn's theory of evolution from its roots in the eclectic Christianity of his mother, through his student days with Arnold Guyot, James McCosh, and T. H. Huxley, through his mature work at the American Museum. It will examine the trials and tribulations, the friendships and conflicts, and the world in which he lived: all of which contributed to the construction of his theory. That personal drives and demons were, in some cases, a catalyst to human evolution researches have been largely ignored. It is an under examined aspect not only of Osborn's motivations, but also in the historiography of evolution.; Osborn's human evolution theory had wider implications. It is accepted wisdom that Osborn's thinking on science and evolution was colored by his racism. To the contrary, as with his political ideas, his views on race were motivated by his science. His science was grounded in a religious doctrine that one had to struggle to earn spiritual salvation. All of the ideas he developed, the theories he put forward, the causes he supported, and the pronouncements he made were directly linked to his desire to confirm that salvation was obtainable. His belief in the Central Asian origins of humans, his role as a social activist for eugenic reforms and immigration restriction, his support for Nordicism, questions of social order and control, his place in the ‘New’ versus ‘Old’ biology debate, his rejection of man's primate ancestors (the terrible monkeys), his role in the Christian Fundamentalist controversy, the Scopes trial, and finally his construction of the ‘Dawn Man’ hypothesis, all stemmed from his desire to support his human evolution theory.