ABSTRACT
In November 1993, the cover of Discover magazine featured a striking diorama from the new permanent exhibit “Human Biology and Evolution” at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Walking alone on the African savanna in the shadow of a vast volcano, a naked couple leave their tracks in the white volcanic ash. When I visited the exhibit, I stood for a long time pondering the evocative and unsettling scene. A deep and disturbing message about gender relations was being telegraphed, but what was it? Finally, I realized that the scene represented a modern—“scientific”—version of Adam and Eve’s ejection from the Garden of Eden, with a spouting volcano instead of an angel’s fiery sword, driving our ancestors into the unknown. In thinking about this message, I wondered, how far during the last three decades have we really come as a discipline in the ways we depict women (and men), and their roles during human evolution?
