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Alain Beauvilain: Toumaï, l’aventure humaine. Editions de La Table
Ronde, Paris, 2003, 239 pages, 23 photographs. ISBN 2-7103-2592-6.
Price 2003 of the Overseas Sciences Academy
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Le Figaro
- Nodé-Langlois Fabrice : "True history of Toumaï". Paris, March
11, 2003, p. 26.
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DOCUMENT on July 19th, 2001, a French and three Chadians discover
our older ancestor.
In exclusiveness, extracts and photographs of their account
The cranium of Toumaï, old more than 6 million years old, as it
was at the time of its discovery,and never presented to the public,
capped with a sandstone crust
blackened by manganese. (Photograph Alain Beauvilain)
True history of Toumaï
Fabrice Nodé-Langlois
There was Lucy, the grandmother of all us. Today there is Toumaï.
Its complete fossilized cranium, a man more than 6 million years
old, made the headlines last July in the British scientific review
of reference, Nature, but also of the media of the entire world.
A new candidate for the oldest human ancestor had been just baptized.
The scientific name of this new species discovered one year ago
: Sahelanthropus tchadensis, in reference to these which lived, 3 million years before Lucy,
in the desert of Chad, 2 500 km west of the Rift valley, hitherto
regarded as the cradle of humanity.
The scientific father of Toumaï is French, Michel Brunet of the
University of Poitiers. His smile completed with beard also appeared
in the world press last summer. For this paleontologist, already
discoverer in 1995 of the jaw of Abel, the first Australopithecus found in West Africa, Toumaï crowns a career carried out with
tenacity and perseverance from the Afghan valleys to Cameroon.
For the public, but also a number of journalists, it is whithout
doubt, the valiant Poitevin who discovered the cranium of Toumaï.
The readers of Le Figaro know that historical reality is different
(1). It is the human shutter of this adventure which the work
published the day after tomorrow by the editions La Table Ronde
(2). The author is not Michel Brunet, but one of the discoverers
on the ground, Alain Beauvilain.
This 19 July 2001, when the hominid cranium was seen in the sandstones
of Djurab, Michel Brunet, head of the Franco-Chadian Paleontology
Mission, was in Poitiers. This day, in the furnace of the Sahara,
pushing forward the prospection of fossiliferous sites, reduced
to the minimum, included only two cars and four men: three Chadians,
Ahounta Djimdoumalbaye, Fanoné Gongdibé, Mahamat Adoum, and a
Frenchman, Alain Beauvilain. It is the young person Ahounta, Bachelor
student at the university of Djamena, specialist in the sorting
of tiny fossil teeth, who found Toumaï.
Michel Brunet, on several occasions, qualified Ahounta as "the
best fossil hunter in the team". In spite of this recognition,
he and especially his three companions will be largely occulted
from the press kit announcing the discovery, diffused in July
2002. And, more largely, almost erased from history.
Alain Beauvilain, geographer, author of a thesis on the north
of Cameroon, is of those researchers who have Africa under their
skin. After having taught at the university of Yaounde (1978 to
1989), he was in service at N'Djamena. He fells in love with the
Chadian desert, for so long prohibited for science by the war
and mines, and he organized twenty-eight scientific missions of
prospection, most of them in search of fossils.
The first part of ‘Toumaï, the Human Adventure’ plunges us deep
into the Djurab, this 19th July 2001. With simplicity, the geographer
recounts the emotion of the first meeting with the Ancestor. He
also details how him and his comrades pack the fossils in toilet
paper, or recycle the mineral water bottles to protect the smallest
samples, how the vehicles get stuck in the sand, or in the mud
when the rain, as rare asit is violent, floods the Sahara. Alain
Beauvilain continues with the events leading up the discovery,
and recalls the circumstances when in January 1992 he invited
Michel Brunet, who hunt the dinosaur in Cameroon, to give a conference
to N'Djamena. In January 1994, the paleontologist from Poitiers
carried out his first mexpedition in the Chadian Desert. The north
of the country is depicted by the author as a natural and human
inheritance as ignored as it is attractive, with its giant volcanic
craters and its singular cave paintings.
The second part of the work is less exciting. It however shows
at which point a discovery of the scale of that of Toumaï is the
fruit of patience and perseverance, and how much the man must
remain humble vis-a-vis the desert. As a geographer, Beauvilain
explains how the wind and sand expose and cover the fossiliferous
layers, and how he gradually learned to read the Djurab that he
loves so much. The former "technical assistant" of the franco-chadian
paleontology expeditions takes good care not to delve into the
specialist debate about the identity of Toumaï : human ancestor
or guenon ancestor of the gorillas? This controversy is just briefly
mentioned.
In the months which followed the discovery of Toumaï, the atmosphere
on the ground will be spoiled. At the time of the first return
to the site "TM266", in October 2001, two researchers were added
to the quartet of discoverers. One day, when examining the fossiliferous
field with a fine comb, Beauvilain pointed out to one of these
scientists from France who had just passed by the cheek teeth
of a large herbivore, the Deinotherium, without seeing them. "If you knew what one tells on your back,
you would make like me : to pass without seeing. Let the paleontologists
find the fossils ", says him one. It is all there. The geographer,
qualified as an "employee" in a mail of Michel Brunet, then tells
the adventures which preceded the media advertisement last summer.
To finish on a bitter note: "With my family I left Chad on December
31, 2002, after having worked twenty-four years in Central Africa.
Professor Michel Brunet arrives at N'Djamena January 5, 2003.
It will be his seventh mission in the desert. A photographer joined
him on the 12th. Provided with a cast of Toumaï, they left on
the 14th to discover TM266... "
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- Nodé-Langlois Fabrice : "Passions around a cranium". Paris, 11 mars 2003, p. 26.
AFP.
- 18 septembre 2003. "Quarrels of paternity around 'the senior of humanity'", Toumaï Paris.
Conflits actuels (Revue de sciences politiques)
- "TOUMAÏ , the Human Adventure"
Géochroniques
Bulletin of the Geological Society of France and the Office of
Geological and Mining Research, June 2004.
Toumaï, the Human Adventure.
This adventure, above all is that of the author, a geographer
who worked in Africa for thirty years, and who devoted much effort
on the promotion of natural sciences in Chad. The main part of
this book is devoted to his field expeditions in the hostile environment
of the Chadian Desert, confronted with extreme temperatures, difficulty
of travelling, sandstorms, and equipment failures. Despite all
these obstacles, the great satisfaction which discovery yields
is often present, and Alain Beauvilain can speak about it without
useless emphasis.
If the adventure finishes rather badly for the author, it is not
because of an inhospitable environment, but because of human nature
in some of its not very attractive aspects. When paleontological
research started in Chad in the 1990's Alain Beauvilain contributed
significantly to it but our geographer notes that cohabitation
with certain paleontologists from France was as easy as it was
with geologists, when it was a question of exploring the volcanos
of Tibesti or the meteoritic craters lost in the middle of the
desert. When the scientific stakes go up with the discovery of
hominid remains, the resulting atmosphere is degraded, where abuse
of power becomes the order of the day, discourtesy, and the mania
for secrecy. July 19th, 2001, at the time of a field expedition
with three Chadians, one of them, Ahounta Djimdoumalbaye, a student
of natural science, discovered the well preserved cranium of an
ancient hominid, which became universally known under the name
of Toumaï (following a questionable fashion for giving nicknames
to paleontological specimens), and who will be introduced as the
earliest known representative of the human line (even if other
interpretations were proposed). Things then turn really bad, because
the cranium was not found by "the right" people. To some extent
the scenario of discovery is not what was wanted in certain circles
of French paleontology. Alain Beauvilain then discovered the sordid
aspects of the small world of the paleoanthropology : it will
be necessary for him to undergo vexations, administrative (even
political) pressures, the rewriting of history, all driven by
a thirst for being glory in the media. Everyone knows that scientists
are no more saintly than other men, but this account leaves a
feeling of indisputable disgust. Perhaps some people will regret
that Alain Beauvilain did not throw a modest veil over the matter
which really lacks elegance, but it is not useless to reveal such
behaviour, known in scientific circles, but often ignored by the
public. And if anyone feels that they were wrongly criticized,
then nothing is to prevent them presenting their own version of
the facts.
The press tells us that attempts were made to withraw the book,
which is definitely disturbing, from sale. Thus hasten to read
it, it is edifying.
E Buffetaut
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HISTORIENS ET GEOGRAPHES (HISTORIANS AND GEOGRAPHERS),
2004, n° 386.
Alain Beauvilain, geographer, doctor and senior lecturer in Paris
X-Nanterre, remained twenty-four years in Central Africa, where
he undertook his work of thesis and taught many years at the University
of Yaounde. At the following day of the disorders in the North
of Chad and the Françoise Claustre afffair, he took part in at
the side of local researchers and French teachers on expediion,
with the location of the fossiliferous deposits revealed by erosion
in the ancient sediments of the Chadian basin until the discovery
of "Toumaï" the subject of this book. Conceived like a detailed
account, almost from day to day, the patient search of layers
and the collecting of the most interesting parts without anything
to hide the difficulties of the task in the middle of the desert,
the work thus patiently carries out us from one campaign to the
other until the event which, in July 2001, rewarded this collective
search: the discovery of a complete cranium of Australopithecus, Sahelanthropus tchadensis, west of the great African Rift!
The work, abundantly illustrated, is in four parts. The first,
around fifty pages long, reports "the discovery of Toumaï", reports
the circumstances leading up to it and recalls the other lucky
finds which prepared the way since the find in January 1995 of
"Abel", Australopithecus barhelghazali, in the north of the country, a good quarter century after the
discovery in 1961, by Yves Coppens, of "Tchadanthrope". There
follows a chapter packed with "the start of the researches", an
occasion to evoke their slow progression and the accompanying
efforts carried out in parallel in the capital for "developing
the acquired knowledge and to restore it to the authorities and
the Chadian population '' (p. 60 to 149). In the third part, "the
research of the parents", that is to say a new thorough examination
of the discovery site in search of other evidence of human presence
and of "biogeochronologic markers" in a satisfactory quantity
with, in conclusion, some elements of interpretation proposed
by the author who, one must remember, is not a specialist in paleontology.
The work ends with about fifty pages evoking the immediate repercussions
of the event, at the local and international levels, as well as
the efforts of the discovery team to avoid being robbed of their
discovery. Because the history from then on, becomes rather rocambolesque
and, vis-a-vis at the obvious risk of collecting notoriety, one
includes/understands better the reasons behind the meticulous
description of the successive excavation campaigns which comprises
the heart of the book. The goal is to testify, indeed, to the
eyes of the world, the quality of the sustained effort and the
role played in the discovery of the oldest fossil hominid by a
welded team of obstinated researchers thus refuting, even with
the consent of Yves Coppens, of the scenario of the "East Side
Story" which he erected a scaffolding on the basis of the many
human fossils until then discovered in East Africa.
Jean-Claude MAILLARD
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Journal des Africanistes ('Africanists Paper')
- Roger Joussaume. "Toumaï, the Human Adventure". Vol. 73-1, 203 : 167-194
Libération :
- Briet Sylvie : "Taken head around Toumaï. Quarrel of scientists around discovered
of our old ancestor". Paris, Saturday September 20, 2003
Notre Histoire (Our History) :
- Toumaï, the Human Adventure. Paris, n° 210, May 2003, pp. 5.
Pour la Science :
- "Toumaï, the human adventure". Paris, n° , February 2004, p. 102.
Radio France. La radio du livre.
- Toumaï. Dedication of March 18, 2003.
Revolution (newspaper on line)
- "TOUMAÏ , the Human Adventure"
Sciences et avenir :
- Fléaux Rachel : "Greatness and lowness of a discovery". Paris, n° 677, pp. 95-96.
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