ABSTRACT
What does it mean to have evolved out of Africa? The question, which is the motivation for this book, actually came to me by eavesdropping in museums. While studying as a geneticist in the American Museum of Natural History in 1996, I spent many lunch breaks with the stunning dioramas of the Hall of Human Biology and Evolution. On one occasion, I overheard a provocative conversation between a mother and her young child. Standing in front of a diorama of Homo erectus in Africa, a diorama depicting a couple carving raw meat and warding off imposing scavengers on the East African savanna, the child asked, “Mom, why don’t we look like that anymore?” His mother paused momentarily then rather confi dently responded, “Because we left Africa.” This unexpected rationale took hold of me and inspired a whole chain of insistent questions: What exactly happens when museum visitors encounter such provocative representations of human origins in museums? How do they make sense of these representations and integrate them into their identities? What set of tools – whether cultural, intellectual, religious, racial, or political – do visitors bring with them to exhibitions, and how do these tools interact with what is being given to them? And more specifi cally, how did the trope of “leaving Africa” come to represent a condition or catalyst for evolutionary progress?
