AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 56:411-429(1981) Tales of the Phylogenetic Woods: The Evolution and Significance of Evolutionary Trees

The styles of continuing intellectual traditions can have a major effect on the way in which scientific findings are expressed. Darwin and Huxley, for all their intellectual daring followed the skeptical tactics of the Scottish Enlightenment and avoided the construction of human phylogenetic trees, even though they were aware of the evidence on which such could have been constructed. The romantic evolutionism of Haeckel, Keith, and many subsequent writers in English produced suggested phylogenies on the basis of largely hypothetical forms including Homo “alalus,” “stupidus,” and “Eoanthropus.” The structural aspects of phylogenetic schemes that derive from the French intellectual ethos, from catastrophism to cladistics and punctuated equilibria, have stressed discrete categorical entities in the tradition of Platonic essentialism and have tended to avoid a consideration of evolutionary dynamics. Intellectual traditions frequently shape the way in which scientific questions are posed as well as the procedures undertaken to answer them. When I attempted to provide a paleoanthropological illustration of this realization some 15 years ago (Brace, 1964), one of the commentators phrased the rhetorical query, “Since when in science can one base oneself on arguments of nationality?” (Genoves, 196423). This objection was raised in regard to issues relating to the phylogenetic treatment of a particular set of human fossils, and, from the perspective of the history of science, a relatively minor matter. The proper response, had I been adequately prepared, would have been to note the reaction of a figure of unimpeachable stature to the various ways in which a truly major scientific synthesis was perceived. The best example is the reaction of none other than Charles Darwin to the reception of his theory of evolution by means of natural selection. In a letter he wrote to the French anthropologist Armand de Quatrefages, he said, “It is curious how nationality influences opinion; a week hardly passes without my hearing of some naturalist in Germany who supports my views, and often puts an exaggerated value on my works; whilst in France I have not heard of a single zoologist, except M. Gaudry (and he only partially) who supports my views” (in F. Darwin [ed.], 1887:299). The Comparative Reception of Darwinism (Glick [ed.], 1974) admirably documents the fact that there are indeed different national styles of thinking when it comes to dealing with major aspects of science. If this has been true for the treatment of the interpretation of organic evolution in general, it has also been true for approaches to the study of human evolution in particular. As this paper will attempt to show, this is graphically illustrated by the various forms that are offered as human phylogenetic trees. NINETEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND Verbal portrayals of human descent in the form of a tree are present in the very earliest written records and are commonly found in cultures that lack a system of writing. Further, many cultures contain accounts of the kinship between humans and particular members of the animal kingdom, although these are usually expressed in symbolic and totemic form and rarely, if ever, rendered as identifiable parts of a literal family tree (cf. treatments by Frazer, 1887; Freud, 1950; Levi-Strauss, 1962). While there were occasional earlier attempts to portray a more than biblical human antiquity and a putative lineal kinship with nonhuman anDelivered a t the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. December