Season 2: The Taung Child

 

A century after the fossilised skull of a three-year-old surfaced at the Northern Limeworks in Taung, South Africa, we retrace how a newly found species, Australopithecus africanus rooted human origins in Africa, while exposing the colonial prejudice that shaped its telling.

 

Across four episodes, we trace the unnamed hands behind the find, revisit the Piltdown hoax that blinded Europe to Africa and rejected the Taung Skull, and reckon with the discoverer Raymond Dart’s conflicting legacy.

 

The season dismantles the lone-explorer myth and asks what ethical, collaborative science can look like, on the ground, in public, and in the stories we pass on.