The Caveman’s Corner

I finished Amir Aczel’s The Jesuit and the Skull: Teilhard de Chardin, Evolution, and the Search for Peking Man today, and I decided to write up a review/reflection sort of thing. I haven’t decided exactly which yet. I’ve thought about adding a feature like this before and I enjoyed doing it, so you might conceivably see more reviews.

From Amazon, obviously

The Jesuit and the Skull is nominally concerned with the work of the great French Jesuit-scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) on the Homo erectus fossils discovered in the 20s and 30s in China and known collectively as Peking Man. In reality, it’s more of a biography of Father Teilhard. Aczel certainly covers Peking Man, but really with the spirit of telling a story about Teilhard. Missing are the lengthy discussions of anatomy and phylogentic significance that might feature prominently in a work with a more specifically scientific bent (perhaps fortunate given Aczel’s somewhat sloppy coverage of the science he does address).

Teilhard with one of the Peking Man skulls

Teilhard is definitely the hero. The coverage is wall-to-wall sympathetic. I think this is somewhat of a failing, as Aczel glosses over the inconsistency and even wackiness of some of Teilhard’s views to a modern scientific viewpoint (he believed in universally progressive evolution, for example). In perhaps its greatest failure, The Jesuit and the Skull completely ignores Teilhard’s role in the discovery and analysis of Piltdown Man, in which he was an enthusiastic participant. The book, despite taking Teilhard from childhood in Auvergne to his final years exiled in New York, makes only passing and parenthetical references to the great hoax. I wouldn’t expect a roasting, but it is a portion of Teilhard’s life and research which should have been better addressed.

Regardless, the story Aczel tells is certainly worth telling. The stuff about the discovery of Peking Man is interesting a good account, as are the many stories of Teilhard’s other adventures in Asia and around the world. I was particularly surprised and impressed with the treatment given the Scopes Trial in 1925, which was actually the best I’ve ever read. Aczel cited it as a reason for the enthusiastic media coverage offered Peking Man (post-Scopes) relative to Dart’s Australopithecus finds (pre-Scopes). It seems as good an explanation as any.

What really struck me, though, was the merciless persecution Teilhard was subjected to by the Vatican and his own Jesuit Order. He really was a twentieth-century Galileo. Teilhard spent the majority of his life in exile from his beloved France and muzzled by the Vatican’s refusal to allow him to publish (as a Jesuit priest, he had to have the permission of the Church authorities to publish any work potentially contravening Catholic orthodoxy). His travel was often severely restricted and he was forced to abandon or decline prestigious academic positions.

You’re tempted to imagine what Teilhard might have accomplished had he never taken his Orders. On a more carefully examination of the man, however, it more seems that for him being a paleontologist and being a priest were not only compatible, they were mutually dependent upon each other. Without his faith, it is questionable that Teilhard could have accomplished anything of the importance that he did. Perhaps on a level that’s true for all of us. Teilhard’s habit and collar only accentuate the argument that every scientist must be a whole person. Faith in God and the Church obviously isn’t prerequisite to being a great scientist, but beliefs and deeply held convictions of some kind are. Otherwise there would be no point.

In the final chapter of The Jesuit and the Skull, Aczel gives an interesting discussion geared toward what happened to the Peking Man fossils and the various investigations that have been launched to locate them (the entire collection was lost mysteriously en route to the US in 1942). The theories range from their being hidden in China to stashed secretly at the American Museum of Natural History to crated to the Soviet Union. As far as I can tell, the most likely scenario? They were found by Japanese soldiers and sold to Chinese peasants to be ground into traditional medicines. Don’t you love a happy ending?

The Jesuit and the Skull might be a case of the subject redeeming the book. The writing and presentation are so-so, but the life and work of Teilhard shine through and are what keep you reading. So, if you’re interested in what this book has to offer, it might not be a bad one

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 8:02 pm and is filed under Archaeology, Book Reviews, Human Evolution. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.